It’s winter 2010. Sitting behind a plain table in the bare, bleak interview room of a state prison in Alabama is an old man: James Bonard Fowler, now seventy-six, alone, waiting. A door clangs open and a black Prison Guard wheels in a wheelchair containing a bald, bespectacled man, over eighty years old, but with eyes alive and sparkling with malice. This is Edgar Ray Killen, convicted in 2005 for organising the murders of the Civil Rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Mickey Schwerner in Neshoba County, Mississippi. Fowler rises to his feet to shake hands with Killen, who then motions the Guard to install him alongside the table.
Killen Trooper Fowler.
Fowler Mr Killen.
In position now, Killen looks up at the Guard.
Killen Thank you, boy. They told you you could leave us alone, didn’t they?
The Guard nods, his expression surly. He leaves the room and Killen turns back to Fowler, beaming.
Well, it’s an honour to meet you, sir.
Fowler I couldn’t believe it when they told me about this. I thought you were still …
Killen That’s right, only four years into a sixty-year sentence in Rankin County jail. But, you know, I still got a few friends able to set me up a little Christmas treat.
Fowler I’m impressed.
Killen But they only gave you six months, am I right?
Fowler Yes, sir: plea bargain. The DA, only black DA they got in Alabama, he knew no jury would convict me …
Killen See, that’s where Alabama’s still got it over Mississippi. I read the other day where some nigger in Selma just got two hundred years for robbing a garage and shooting the owner.
Fowler Two hundred years?
Killen Good behaviour, he’ll be out in fifty.
They laugh.
Yeah, so, he got two hundred years, you got six months: see what I’m saying about Alabama?
Fowler I do.
Killen And plea bargain, you were telling me?
Fowler Part of the deal was, he made me apologise in court to the family. I had to do it, but, you know, I made sure I didn’t look at them.
Killen This nigger DA you’re talking about?
Fowler That’s right.
Killen You know, I remember saying fifty years ago, if they bring in this goddamn Voting Rights Bill, next thing you know, there’ll be a nigger in the White House.
They both contemplate this for a moment, their expressions solemn.
Anyway, six months ain’t so bad.
Fowler Yeah, I did longer than that in a jail in Thailand, but that’s another story.
Killen Tell them you’re ill, they’ll let you out sooner. I made an appeal bond that way, coulda been all right, but that fuckin’ judge, I think someone musta been blackmailing him, I caught a real bad break.
Killen Anyway, I wanted to know, when you killed that nigger … can’t recall his name, now …
Fowler Jimmie Lee Jackson.
Killen Jackson, yeah: were you chastised at the time? Were you disciplined?
Fowler Nope. I was promoted. Transferred and promoted.
Killen Then you killed another nigger the following year, is that right?
Fowler Yeah. Also self-defence.
Killen Well, yes, of course, that goes without saying. And did you get into trouble that second time?
Fowler Not for a minute. Only trouble I got into, I had a fight with my supervisor and pushed his face through the windshield of his cruiser. Cost me my badge.
Killen Tough.
Fowler No, it was all right, I went to Vietnam. My brother got killed out there, so I went out and offed as many gooks as I could find.
Killen Point I’m making is, you didn’t get in no trouble for the niggers?
Fowler Not then, no.
Killen Then how’d you wind up here?
Fowler Talked to a journalist.
Killen That’s always a big mistake.
Fowler You said it. I just, you know, told him what happened. I thought, hell, it’s been forty-five years, nobody’s said a word, I figured there must be some kind of … statute of limitations.
Killen Well, sure, of course. Listen, when I was a kid in Mississippi, I had no idea it was against the law to kill a nigger. Guy who told me, I thought he was joking with me.
Fowler nods in complete agreement.
Fowler And all these assholes keep telling me I’m a racist. That’s so stupid, I’m not a racist! I think Nelson Mandela is a great man. Hell, my wife is Burmese.
Killen They’ll never get within a mile of understanding the way we think. I’m a man of God.
Pause. He settles in his wheelchair.
Most everyone thinks well of me; I been a jackleg preacher all my life. I pastored churches all over Neshoba County for more than fifty years. But I’m like you, you know, I’m a good soldier, I follow orders. Anyways, back in the summer of nineteen hundred and sixty-four, which was a hot one, I get a call from the Imperial Wizard and he issues me with an order number four, you understand what I’m saying? He tells me there’s these three troublemakers come down from up North, a Commie and a Jewboy and a nigger, Civil Rights workers, scum of the earth; and he says he wants their rear ends tore up.
So I call my guys, I just have to say two words: payday’s comin’. First thing, I had the deputies arrest them and throw them in Neshoba County jail, so I could buy me a little time, enough to figure out a plan. I had the big dozer moved over to the dam and working; and late in the evening we released them. They beat up on the nigger a little too heavy with them chains, which wasn’t too smart, because he was the driver, but turned out he was still able to drive. They cut them off out on Highway 19 and rode their asses down to Rock Cut Road. Wayne Roberts took the Jew out of the patrol car. You know what he said? Wayne asked him if he was a niggerlover and he said, ‘Sir, I know just how you feel.’How do you like that? Wayne shot him, then he executed the Commie. Jimmy Jordan was pissed. He said: ‘You didn’t leave me nothing but a nigger.’ Then he shot him anyway and said, ‘Well, at least I killed me a nigger.’ They took the bodies over to the dam and dug ’em in with the dozer, down where the sun don’t shine, in fifteen feet of Mississippi clay. They’d never have been found, ’cept some greedy fuck squealed to the FBI for cash.
A job well done, wouldn’t you say? We didn’t get no more trouble out of them.
It was Father’s Day, as I recall. But that’s OK. The nigger was the only one with children.
Long silence.
Well, my friend. Just wanted you to know someone was looking out for you.
Totally unexpectedly, he rises to his feet.
Got some more calls to make.
He ambles comfortably over to the door and calls out.
Boy!
He walks back towards Fowler, hand extended, and shakes hands with him.
Takes more’n they know to put a good man down, am I right?
Fowler nods, says nothing. The Guard has returned and now Killen moves back towards the door, leaving the Guard to push the empty wheelchair behind him. Killen turns in the doorway, letting the Guard go past him.
Keep fighting the good fight, y’hear?
He leaves. Fowler sits at the table, motionless, looking out front as the light slowly fades.