CHAPTER 24

Dorothy Tull,

Marietta, Georgia, Saturday, September 6, 1947

The Book said, “What a person desires is unfailing love. Better to be poor than a liar.” She knew the reference: Proverbs 19:22.

She lay in her empty bed, staring up at the ceiling and trying to pray. Unconsciously, she whispered the words. “Better to be poor than a liar,” and “unfailing love.” She had never imagined her life like this. Her husband and her son were a year in their graves, and there was no comfort for her, not even in the son she had left.

Dottie Tull had been faithful to her husband for a decade. Jacob was a good man and she had gracefully accepted her duty to him. Their lives had been good. The two boys looked as though they would follow in their daddy’s footsteps and grow into kind, decent men. They were as alike as peas in a pod, with only their intimate mannerisms to distinguish the one from the other. Roy had his father’s gravity. Eli was more imaginative.

She’d strayed from her connubial promise for the first time during the previous summer. She had been cajoled and charmed for three months prior. She had been firm and proper in her refusal of the man’s attentions, but secretly she was delighted when he did not move on to easier pickings.

She had gone in early July to begin late replanting of several failed tobacco fields. There had been far too much rain in June, and many of the planter’s holdings were nothing but mud. They were going to attempt a second planting that might or might not yield a poor September crop. It had rained yet again early in the morning, reducing the field to a soupy mess. The workers had been sent home, and when everyone was gone, Dottie allowed herself to be seduced in an empty drying shed.

The sex had been rough and expert, in a way that had opened her to possibilities she had never imagined. She had come home rubbed raw and aching for more of the same. She had gone to bed that night and pulled the night dress over her head before she got between the sheets. Jacob had been shocked, and she shushed him with her mouth. She mounted him, and thinking about the drying shed, she had climaxed almost immediately. At almost that very moment, the hammering started on the door.

She had screamed her voice away as Eli was dragged to the waiting car. Six days later, his little body was found in the muddy tobacco field she had been sent to work in, and it was quickly revealed that he had been tortured and killed in the same shed she had fornicated in. A weaker mind than hers would have snapped like a twig.

The men who killed Eli were themselves killed, and poor Jacob was taken in chains to have his neck broken by a rope.

Her remaining son, Roy, was a liar.

She was sending him to her sister in North Carolina. She refused to live every day of her life with the reminder of her sin talking to her, eating from her table, and sleeping under her roof. Roy had to go.

“Unfailing love,” she whispered again, and closed her eyes.

***

Present Day:

Sydney, Molly, and I drove by the Sutton’s house, and looked at an empty driveway. The motorcycle was gone, and the station wagon was nowhere in sight.

“Well, we know Arthur’s not here, anyway,” I said. “Perfect.”

Sydney parked across the street from the house, grabbed her purse, and opened the driver’s door.

“Got your gun?” I said, smiling.

“Bet on it,” she said. “You think these people are funny?”

“Kinda,” I muttered.

Molly and I exchanged a look, then got out and followed her across the street.

As we came up the weedy front walk, we could see a piece of paper taped inside the screen door. We stood on the top step and read it.

I am at the store. Youre car is with me. Sorry about this.

“Should we wait?” Molly asked.

“Might as well. We’re here now,” I said. “If she’s just shopping, she’ll probably be back soon.”

“At least until Junior gets home. If he shows up, we’re getting the hell out of here.

“No,” I said. “If he gets here first, I’m going to talk to him instead. He knows what’s going on. I have a message to deliver, and then we’re going home.”

We sat in the van and waited. The first fat raindrops spattered on the windshield.

“Shit,” Sydney said. “It’s going to pour all day. Every time I have to wait in the car for someone, I do it in the rain.”

The drops turned into a staccato tapping and then a roar. The street was blurred by the downpour. I sat and thought and became increasingly uneasy.

“That note bothers me,” I said. “She’s at the store with his car. Why does she say Sorry about this?”

“Guess she’s not supposed to use it.”

“It’s the word choice that bothers me,” I said. “Not sorry, but sorry about this. It seems funny somehow.”

Sydney didn’t answer. She turned the key on and the wipers swept the glass. The rain was too heavy for them to improve things much. The inside of the glass was beginning to fog. There was a young boy on the street, walking away from us. He was little more than a blurred silhouette in the deluge. I felt sorry for him.

He looked back at us over his shoulder. Molly sat up in the seat beside me, staring at him. She gripped my hand.

“That’s Eli,” I said. “Drive, Sydney. I know what store she’s at.”

The copper-colored wagon was parked on the muddy asphalt in front of the boarded-up general store. There was no one visible inside it. The rain was coming down harder than ever, and the afternoon was getting dark.

“Stay here,” I said. “Both of you. No sense in all of us getting wet.”

“What the fuck is she doing here?” Sydney breathed.

“Don’t know. Can’t think of anything good.”

I had a baseball cap with me, and I put it on. I opened my door, and took a deep breath before I dove into the rain. I went to the Pontiac. It was empty. The keys hung from the switch on the dashboard. I left it, ran to the building, and up the front steps. On the porch, I wiped the water from my face and looked back at the van. It was a blur, and I couldn’t make out the faces behind the windshield.

The front door was boarded up tight with screwed-in plywood sheets. I tested the edges. The wood had swollen and was probably tighter than when it was installed. There was an expanse of plate glass running the length of the porch. It would have been added when the old building was modernized. Each large pane was also covered with wooden sheeting, except for the top three or four inches. None of the glass behind the wood appeared to have been broken.

Someone still owned the place. Whether it was the bank or the county, there would be some provision for entering the building to inspect or do emergency maintenance. I sketched a wave in the women’s direction, snugged my wet hat down, and ran to the back of the building. My heart jumped into my throat as I turned the last corner. I tried to stop, dug in my heels, slipped and fell. Someone was standing behind the building. Looking up from the ground, I realized it was only the old iron water pump, standing lonely vigil in the mud.

I picked myself up and went to the back entrance. The rain was warm, and so heavy I felt in danger of drowning. The door was metal, faded green with rust streaks. I pushed on it and it opened. I didn’t go in.

“Wanda?” I shouted. “Ms. Sutton?”

There was no response. I took a couple of steps inside. The short hallway was barely illuminated by the murky day behind me. A padlock lay at my feet. It was still snapped closed. I turned and saw that the hasp had been ripped loose from the door jamb. There was no water on the filthy linoleum ahead of me. Whoever was here had come in before the rain started. I looked behind me and debated returning for the women. I wanted the security of another person as much as I wanted the gun in Sydney’s purse.

The most dreadful often turns to adventure when we have company. I had seen more ghosts than I cared to, and when I was by myself it turned my guts to water. When I had someone beside me, the terror was delicious, exhilarating. In point of fact, we weren’t designed to be alone. We are social to our bones, little pieces of a great whole, and I desperately didn’t want to be alone right now.

However, I also had a strong sense that this place, and what was unfolding here, was my inheritance, and I wasn’t supposed to share this legacy with anyone else. Instead of going back to get Sydney and her gun, I started slowly forward.

The hallway was perhaps a dozen feet long, with a single door opening midway up on the right, and another farther up on the other side. The light from the open door at my back disappeared where the passage opened into the gloom of the main space beyond it. I nudged open the first door, and, as my eyes adjusted, I could make out a filthy toilet. The ends of pipe protruded from the wall where a sink had been ripped out. The mirror on the wall was covered with what looked like writing. I couldn’t make sense of it.

A shadow seemed to coalesce and move in the dim glass. I squinted, desperately wishing for more light.

A few steps farther, the door on the left opened into a pitch black space that was long and narrow. I got my cell phone from my pocket, opened it, and held it out. The feeble illumination from the display did nothing to help me see, and I closed the door again. I would have to come back to this area later if Wanda didn’t turn up.

I moved into the store itself. There was a band of gray light coming in at the top of the windows that lined the front. The sheets of wood screwed over them didn’t quite reach the tops of the frames. The illumination was minimal, and my eyes adjusted by degrees. Some of the metal shelving had been left behind, and the cashier counter was intact. Old cigarette and snack food advertisements still adorned the walls. The rustic, open ceiling soared high overhead, the edges of wooden beams and trusses visible before they disappeared into the dark overhead.

I knew that Wanda wasn’t all right. I didn’t know what form not all right would take, though. She could be dead, or hurt, lying in a corner. She could have lost whatever sanity she possessed and be sitting on the floor drooling. Worst of all, she might have taken a violent turn and be waiting somewhere in the dark, holding a knife or a gun. I had known where to find her when I had seen the note. I had no doubt that she also knew I was coming.

I found her where I least expected to. In the near-dark, at first my eyes rejected the sight of her and passed on in their search, but eventually they returned to her. She was right in front of me. She stood, unmoving, in mid-air. I jumped backward, my heart feeling like it was going to explode. I saw spots, and it was several moments before they cleared and I could make out the rope that held her up.

She hung almost in the exact center of the store, her back to me. Her hands were by her sides. She was twisting very slightly back and forth on her line, as if nudged by the smallest breeze, although I couldn’t feel any air movement. I stood very still, hardly breathing. There was something grave, reverent, holy, or maybe unholy, about the moment. It was time to go, but I felt a need to be sure that it was Wanda before I ran out. I felt like she deserved to have me find her, and she would not be really found until I had seen her face.

I moved in a wide circle around the body, always keeping my eyes upward on her, moving my feet with a sweeping motion to avoid tripping over debris in the half-light.

When I had made my way to the front of her, a dim gray wash illuminated her face. It was Wanda Sutton. She wore a flowered shift and one bedroom slipper. I didn’t see the other one. The blood-darkened face had a look of distaste; her tongue protruded slightly from her lips, as though she were repulsed by the situation she found herself in. Her blonde hair was tousled, and her eyes were slitted.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

A step ladder lay on its side beneath her feet. Up close she smelled terrible. I felt badly for her. It was a hard life that hung ended in front of me, and I found myself reaching for a prayer.

As I turned to go, she opened her eyes. In the dim light, they looked filmy and the whites were dark, perhaps bloodshot. She looked around the room, moving nothing but her eyes. Her gaze settled on me. I felt the pulse in my ears, and the sudden weakness in my arms and legs.

“I know what you did,” she croaked.

“Not real,” I whispered.

“I--know--what you did.” Her vocal chords were ruined. The speech sounded painful.

“Not real,” I said a bit louder and started to move away.

Her hair became darker, and her stocky body slimmed. The flowered shift looked white and seemed longer.

“Get up here, you bad girl.”

I found my legs, and moved quickly toward the door. Back in the hallway, I turned and looked back. Her legs were kicking violently, and her hands were over her head, grabbing wildly at the rope in a paroxysm of regret.

She swung back and forth, and the beam she hung from creaked.

“Not real!” I shouted.

“I know what you did!” she screamed.

I turned and ran directly into Molly, who had been standing behind me.

“Oh my God, Mike,” she breathed, staring up transfixed. “Look at her! Look at her--”

“Go!” I screamed. “Go!”

We ran. I slammed into the door at the end of the hall and we were back outside in the rain. I skidded around the corner of the building and sprinted for the van, hustling Molly ahead of me. We pulled open the passenger door and scrambled in. Sydney looked at us, her eyes wide.

“Pull out to the road,” I yelled at her. “Park on the shoulder.”

“What happened?” she asked, her voice stretched thin.

“Don’t talk, Sydney! Get us off the property, right now!”

She put the van in gear, and I heard whining as the tires spun on the wet blacktop. We left the parking lot and slewed onto the highway.

“Pull over and stop!” I shouted.

From the shoulder of the road, I looked back at the store. There was no movement except for the shimmer of the rain.

“Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t mean to yell. We had to get off the property. This is safe enough.”

I sat forward and pulled out my cell phone. I was worried about the wet, but it seemed to be working. I called the police.

Six hours later, Molly and I stood on Lemon Street in front of the police station. The dispatcher had called us a taxi. The rain had stopped, but the street was wet, and absolutely empty. There was a traffic light at each end of the short block. Unsynchronized, they ignored each other, changing color from red to green to yellow with complete disregard for what the other was doing. The place had gone to bed without me, and even with a mostly silent Molly beside me, the loneliness was crushing.

“I’ve never felt so rotten about anything in my life,” I said.

“Hush, Mike.”

“I feel like I caused this.”

“Hush.”

Sydney was long since gone home, and I didn’t remember the city well enough to try walking back to the doctor’s house. Even though I had grown up in the area, the place felt alien to me, like something I had once dreamed. I saw the cab’s headlights turn into the street, and I stepped out and waved.

Wanda’s death was apparently a suicide, but it was still under cursory investigation. Sydney, Molly and I had watched from the backs of separate police cruisers as emergency crews attended the general store. The circumstances of my finding the body were confused and uncomfortable. Sydney had quietly advised me to stick with the truth and refer any questions I was unsure of to Crider the lawyer. The police officers who had spoken with me had progressed during the evening from vague excitement and suspicion to bored disinterest. They finally let us go.

The old doctor met us at his front door, wearing a plaid bathrobe. “I would have picked you up,” he said. “Hungry? Coffee? Tea?”

I thought about it, and Molly answered for both of us. “Tea would be all right, thanks.”

We sat at his kitchen table and watched him boil water and make toast. When it was ready, he sat with us.

“I’ll be glad to get home, Roy,” I sighed.

“I bet. You’re okay to go? They didn’t tell you not to leave town or anything?”

“No. At first they were a little bit pushy with me. I think Wanda and her son are known to them, though. I hate to say it, but they’re--”

“Trailer trash,” he finished drily. “No tears shed for her loss. I’m familiar with the phenomenon. Did young Arthur show up?”

“I never saw him, no. They kept us at the store for about an hour before they drove us to the station to talk to us. They still hadn’t taken her out at that point, and I never saw Arthur.”

He stood up, walked to the counter, and dropped more bread into the toaster. He spoke with his back to me. “So you think that’s it? You think she was your blackmailer?”

“I think so, yes. Her son probably was involved to some degree, but I don’t care. It’s over.”

“Do you feel like you slew your dad’s dragon, so to speak?”

“I would never have wished this on anyone,” I said sharply. “I didn’t want her to get away with torturing my father, but I didn’t want anyone dead either.”

He came back to the table and set a plate of toast in front of me. “Not what I meant. I’m asking if you feel more at peace about things.”

“I’m not sure, Roy.” I sighed. “It’s been a hell of a day. I’d like to say that I righted a wrong, but I didn’t. To be honest, I don’t know why my dad gave her any money, or gave in to blackmail. She couldn’t have seemed like much of a threat.”

“That may be where her son came in,” he said. “There may have been physical intimidation. Arthur’s kind of a pathetic creep, but he’s no stranger to physical threats on folks who are weaker than him. I can tell you from experience, age is a humbling process.” He sipped at his tea, lost in his own thoughts for a moment.

I sat quietly.

“For a strong man like your father, realizing that he was no match any more for a cowardly punk like Arthur could have been devastating. If he was drinking, and already prone to depression, who knows what kind of obsessive thinking could have developed. If he was feeding them money to leave him alone, and it finally ran out, that might have been the end of him.”

“It all fits,” I said. “I guess the question is whether I leave Arthur alone, knowing what I do.”

“Yes,” Molly said. “Enough. Your dad never wanted this. It’s time for us to get home.”

“I can tell you, he’s going to be lost without his mama, more than you think. Without her around, he’s going to dry up and blow away. I can bet you he’ll be dead of one thing or another inside a year. I guess you’ll have to follow your heart.”

“Right now I’m too tired to feel anything, Roy. I’m grateful for your kindness. It’s nice seeing you, but right now I wish I was home.”

“Molly tells me you have a big reason to get yourself home,” he smiled. “Nice surprise.”

“What is it? She won’t tell me.”

“And you think I will? You think I got this old by being foolish?”

Molly laughed. She wagged a finger at Roy. “Hush, you,” she warned. “Not a word.”

“Not a word,” he repeated, smiling broadly. “Sorry, Mike. I think too much of this girl to get on her bad side.”

I felt good about that. A bit of the day’s dread eased itself off of me.

“Do you want to take care of your parent’s ashes before you go? We can do it in the morning.”

I did. It was time to send them on their way.

“Yes, please,” I said. “We’ll do it in the morning.”