A SAXOPHONE SOLO BY STAN GETZ DISSOLVED INTO A COTtony fuzz of static about a half hour north of Mobile. Reluctantly, Luther snapped the radio off. He knew from experience that he wouldn’t pick up another station worth listening to until he skirted the edge of Birmingham three hours from now. Nothing but hillbilly music and farm reports till then. Payton County was almost two hours past that, straddling the Tennessee River up near the border. Angus, the county seat, was pretty much the only thing there that might be counted as a town—and that was if you were being generous. He doubted anyone there had ever heard of Stan Getz.
So Luther knew this would be a long, mostly silent drive unless he cleared the air with his sister. They had spoken barely an extraneous word all morning.
“Look …” he began.
She was ready for him. “Don’t worry about it,” she said crisply.
“I just wanted to apologize,” protested Luther.
“No need,” she told him.
“Yeah, there is. I was pretty rough on you last night.”
“No need,” she repeated. “I know you just wanted what was best for me.” The windows were halfway down and she was wearing a bright scarf to keep the rushing wind from dismantling her hairstyle. Her eyes were invisible behind oversized sunglasses. Now she shifted in her seat to face him. “But if you want to talk about something …”
Oh, shit, groaned Luther, inwardly.
“… we should talk about what happened to you Sunday.”
Luther kept his eyes steady on the road. “Ain’t much to tell,” he said. “Got drunk and hit a police car. That’s the long and short of it.”
He was hoping he could just brazen his way through the interrogation he knew was coming. Maybe if he kept his answers short and curt, he could get it over with more quickly.
“‘Got drunk and hit a police car,’” she repeated. And Luther threw away all hope that this might be painless.
“Yeah,” he said, miserably.
“‘Got drunk,’” she said, “‘and hit a police car.’”
“You ain’t got to keep repeatin’ what I—”
“Got drunk. And then hit a police car.”
“Go ahead and make your point, sis.”
“You could have been killed,” she said hotly. “That’s my damn point, Luther Hayes! You’re just lucky they all thought it was funny, your drunk ass rear-ending a police car. That God you don’t believe in must have really been looking out for you. It’s a wonder they didn’t take you into that police station and beat you half to death, then say you tripped comin’ out the squad car. It’s a wonder they didn’t throw you under the jailhouse.”
“I know,” said Luther, miserably.
“You do?” she said, regarding him closely. “Then how you let some-thin’ like this happen, Luther? As far as I knew from your letters over the years, you hadn’t had a drink since—what?—1942? Isn’t that what you told me?”
“Yeah,” he said. For years, he’d drunk himself to oblivion every night just to get through, just to be able to collapse in his bed without being tormented by the memory of what happened when he was nine. He had gone on the wagon while in army training.
“So, is this a recent change?”
A sigh of surrender. “Yeah,” he said.
“Then what I can’t understand is, why’d you start up again after so many years?”
“No reason,” said Luther. “Just thirsty. Just wanted a drink, is all.”
“Uh huh,” she said. “‘Just wanted a drink is all.’”
He shot her a look. “You gon’ keep repeatin’ every damn thing I say?”
She volleyed the look right back at him. “Depends. You gon’ keep lyin’ to me?”
Luther made a disgusted sound and returned his attention to the road. Theirs was the only car on the highway as it wended its way through a thick strand of loblolly pines. The trees were tall, and at this hour, the sun lay close to the horizon, which lent the shadows an illusion of twilight. All was silent, except for the rustle of tires against asphalt and the faint cry of a red-tailed hawk circling above. Luther put a cigarette to his lips, punched in the lighter on the dashboard.
“Apparently, you went by the old farm last week?”
There was a tentative note in Thelma’s voice. Luther gave a long sigh. The lighter popped up and he touched fire to his cigarette, exhaled a long gray plume that was shredded in the breeze from the window.
“Yeah. I guess Adam told you?”
“Last week,” she said. “Day after you went, in fact. He called me collect, worried. Apparently, you wouldn’t speak to him for a day or two. He thought you were angry with him.”
Luther glanced over. “Wasn’t mad at him.”
“I know,” said Thelma. “That’s what I told him.”
“Just mad, period,” said Luther. “Hurt, if you want to know the truth.”
“I know,” said Thelma again.
“He was askin’ questions. He wanted to know about it. And I figure, he got that right. They was his grandparents, after all. Would have been, at least. He got a right to know why they ain’t around.”
“He does,” she said. “I agree.”
There was a silence.
Then Thelma said, “But it’s not easy for you—for you, especially—to talk about it. Or to go to that land. Because you saw it. You remember it.”
“He had a right to know,” repeated Luther.
“I know he does,” said Thelma. “I’m not arguing that. In fact, I’m not arguing at all. I’m just saying, I know it’s hard for you. And maybe that’s why you felt like you needed a drink?”
He looked over at her. Her eyes were hopeful. She needed to believe she had doped out why he was drinking again. Never mind that Luther had been hungover the very morning she called, asking him to rescue Adam from Selma. Never mind that when she asked about his woozy demeanor, he had told her it was just a headache.
He had lied to her then. Now he had a choice of whether to compound the lie or at last be honest, to tell her he had come face-to-face with the monster who had haunted his dreams for four decades. It wasn’t a difficult decision. He lied.
“Yeah,” he said, “that was it.”
Not that it hadn’t been painful, being on the old farm. Not that he hadn’t needed a drink afterward. But that wasn’t what had returned him to the bottle after all these years. Luther didn’t know how to say that to his sister, didn’t know how to express—or even understand for himself—the shame he had felt after walking into that room and finding Floyd Bitters alive and staring up at him.
Bad enough he had been helpless as a nine-year-old boy. Now he was helpless again as a man pushing fifty-one years.
“Well, I understand,” she said. “But you have to get back on the wagon now. You know that, don’t you?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I know.”
“Don’t want to go back to the way things were.”
The way things were. Such a gentle way to describe the awful years when he drank as a matter of necessity. Luther smiled despite himself. “No,” he said, “don’t want to do that.” He shook his head and added, “You know, I’m the one supposed to be givin’ you a hard time. I’m the big brother.”
“You’re the only brother,” she corrected. “Outside of George and Adam, you’re the only family I have in the world. If you think I’m not going to be concerned about you, you’ve got another think coming.”
Luther was touched. “Well, you know I feel the same,” he said.
He allowed a silence to intervene. The car rumbled over a bridge, past a field where a tractor was pulling a plow ahead of a fantail of dust.
Luther said, “So, let’s talk about today. Assuming you right about Adam being up here, what you going to do? How you going to find him?”
Thelma was looking out the window. She shrugged. “Not sure,” she admitted. “Figure I’ll just ask if anybody has seen him. If that doesn’t work, I’ll try to find the Hodges family. That’s what he would have done.”
“They not likely to take too kindly to you,” said Luther. “I know.”
“Probably didn’t take kindly to him, neither.”
“I know.”
There was another silence. Then Thelma said. “That’s what scares me, Luther.”
“What’s that?”
“As you say, they probably didn’t take kindly to him asking questions. He went up there three days ago. Three days. And we haven’t heard from him since. What could have happened to keep him from calling us for three days?”
Luther touched her shoulder. He knew what she was thinking.
She was thinking Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner.
She was thinking Medgar Evers, James Reeb, and Jimmie Lee Jackson.
She was thinking Carole Robertson, Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, and Addie Mae Collins.
She was thinking that the South was ever the South.
And her boy was missing.
“He be all right,” said Luther. “I’m sure he fine.” He spoke with confidence he did not feel. “You and your mother’s intuition. Like I told you, he probably in Montgomery, chasin’ after some gal.”
He forced himself to laugh. And he pressed a little harder on the accelerator.
They stopped a few hours later at a country crossroads on the outskirts of Birmingham. The new civil rights law said that they could go right downtown, if they so desired, to the lunch counter in Tutwiler Drugstore and order anything off the menu that looked appealing, but neither Luther nor Thelma was willing to test that. So instead, they ate the bologna sandwiches she had packed that morning and washed them down with lukewarm Coca-Colas. They took turns peeing in the woods, they got some gas, and they were back on the road in under an hour.
It was just after two in the afternoon when they crossed the Tennessee River, passing a sign welcoming them to Payton County. Minutes later, they entered the town square in Angus, a cluster of dusty little buildings centered around a bronze statue of some reb soldier standing guard, his rifle at the ready, his eyes lifted to the North. Mountains loomed over the town. Luther found the effect vaguely claustrophobic, like someone constantly looking over your shoulder.
He parked in an angled space behind the reb statue, then checked his watch. “We got about five hours,” he said. “Call it four to be safe.”
Payton was a sundown county. Negroes were not allowed within its borders after dark. This, too, would be illegal under the new civil rights law, but he doubted Payton County gave a damn about that. He remembered his grandfather telling him about a sign he had once encountered at the approach to some hick town back when he was wandering the roads after the Civil War. It said, “Nigger, if you can read this, you’d better run. If you can’t read, run anyway.”
The South was ever the South.
“Four hours,” said Thelma. “Doesn’t give us much time.”
“No, it don’t,” said Luther. “On the other hand, there ain’t that many places to look. Come on.”
He climbed out of the car and they stood a moment, getting their bearings. There wasn’t much foot traffic in the square and what little there was was all white. Passersby allowed their eyes to linger on the two Negroes standing there.
“You’d think they never saw colored before,” said Thelma.
“Ain’t just that,” said Luther. “This one of them towns where everybody know everybody. They wonderin’ who we are.”
The Angus town square was ringed by storefronts. There was a chicken restaurant, a hamburger stand where you ate at picnic tables outside, a café, a thrift store, a church, a market, a couple of saloons, and a two-story building marked as county offices. A sign indicated that the post office was to be found in the grocery store. Another indicated that the café doubled as the Greyhound station.
“So, what do we do now?” asked Luther.
Thelma indicated the café. “Let’s try there first,” she said. “That’s where he would’ve come in.”
Luther shrugged and they crossed the square and pushed open the restaurant door. The tables were unoccupied, the entire room empty but for an old white woman in a ridiculous paper soda jerk’s cap who stood behind the single counter where meals were ordered and bus tickets purchased. “Help you?” she said, looking up from a Bible at the sound of the door.
Then she squinted, light catching on the lenses of her glasses as she got a good look at her visitors. “We don’t serve you all in here,” she snapped. “I don’t give a good goddamn what the goddamn federal government says. We don’t serve niggers.”
Luther’s body went rigid at the insult. Except for going to visit Johan twice a week, he had long made it a point to have as little interaction with white people as he possibly could. This was why. He was ready to turn right around and walk out, but to his surprise, Thelma removed her sunglasses, lowered her head, and smiled, somehow seeming to make herself smaller. “We wasn’t lookin’ to eat, ma’am,” she said.
His sister hadn’t had to deal with white people’s hatefulness for twenty years. Not Southern white people, at least. She had gone away from here, gone back to school, built a new life, accomplished something. Yet, how readily she slipped back into the old pattern of making yourself harmless, putting white folks at their ease. It made him sad.
“Well, if you lookin’ for a bus ticket, you go outside and go around to the window,” said the woman, hooking her thumb to an opening in the wall at the end of the counter where she sat. “You should know that.”
“Beg pardon, ma’am,” said Thelma, “but we ain’t from here. And we wasn’t lookin’ for no ticket. We lookin’ for a boy might’a come through here couple days ago. Tall boy, young, thin. Mulatto. He look ‘mos white. His family ain’t heard from him and his mama got worried, so we come lookin’ for him. You seen anybody look like that, miss?”
The old woman glared. “I don’t pay no attention. They come off the bus out there in the square and they go on their way. That’s all I know. Now, you two, git!”
Her tone was exactly as if she was shooing a bad dog. Luther’s teeth clenched and he looked somewhere else. But he heard the smile in Thelma’s voice. “Thank you, ma’am,” she said. “You have a good day, now.”
“Uh huh,” grunted the woman, licking her thumb to turn a page in her Bible.
Luther pushed open the door. Thelma stepped through and he followed her. They stood there for a moment. “Lord, but I hate Alabama,” whispered Thelma. “I hate the whole goddamn South.”
She didn’t wait for an answer, moving instead to the service window around the side of the chicken restaurant next door. A fat white man, sweat glistening on his pink cheeks, met them there.
“What y’all gon’ have?” he asked.
Thelma was smiling again. “Beg pardon, sir, but we didn’t want nothin’ to eat.”
“Oh?” One eyebrow pushed itself up against the paper cap covering his bald pate. “Well, then what you stop here for? This here’s a place for people want somethin’ to eat.” He laughed, amused by his own wit.
Thelma obliged him with a chuckle. “Yes, sir,” she said, “and it sure do smell nice. But right now, we lookin’ for a colored boy got off a bus here three days ago. We was wonderin’ if you seen him. He ain’t from these parts and his mother scared he might of got lost, got off at the wrong stop, maybe. Tall, thin, look ‘mos white.”
The man shook his head. “Ain’t seen nobody like that,” he said, “but I’ll tell you one thing.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“If he did get off here, I hope he had sense enough to get out of town before the sun went down. Hope that for his sake. Same go for you all, too, by the way.”
Thelma grinned into his warning stare. “Yes, sir,” she said. “We know. Thank you, sir.” And she backed away from the window.
“Can’t imagine he’d have gone into that thrift store,” said Luther, once they were back out on the sidewalk. “You want to try one of these bars?”
Thelma shook her head. “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “He hasn’t been seen in three days. If he did come here—and I believe he did—then there’s only three logical reasons for him to be out of touch.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “One, he’s in the hospital. Two, he’s …”
She stopped, exhaled a deep, shuddering breath. Her eyes blinked at a sudden tear.
“You ain’t got to say it,” said Luther. “I know what you mean.”
She nodded gratefully. “Or three,” she said. “He’s in jail.” And she inclined her head toward the building on the far side of the square marked with a raised, art deco sign that said “County Offices.”
“Or maybe he in Montgomery sniffin’ after some young gal like I been sayin’,” said Luther. But Thelma was already crossing the square and Luther had to trot to keep up.
They pulled open the glass door and entered a small vestibule feeding into a hallway that extended the length of the building. A stairwell with tattered red carpet rose off to the right. Thelma studied a building directory on the wall, then turned to Luther. “It says the sheriff’s department is upstairs.”
Moments later, they found themselves standing before the counter of an open bullpen beneath the loud hum of fluorescent lights. Wanted posters were thumbtacked on a bulletin board above a single file cabinet. An oscillating fan atop the cabinet swept the stale air, the breeze from the blade in the wire cage fluttering papers on the four desks that occupied the room. Only one of the desks was in use. He was a tall, thin man with a sallow face and hound-dog eyes, and he sat reading some paperwork. A brass nameplate pinned to his khaki shirt opposite a five-pointed star identified him as Deputy Stewart.
He made them wait for perhaps a minute. Finally, he glanced up with little interest. “Yeah?” he said.
Thelma smiled. “Yes, sir,” she said, “I’m Thelma, this here is Luther. We lookin’ for a boy we think come through here on Saturday? Family ain’t heard hide nor hair from him since then, and we startin’ to get mighty worried.”
Stewart’s sudden grin showed tobacco-stained teeth and no amusement. “Mulatto boy, frizzy hair, thin build, got a mouth on him?”
Luther and his sister shared a look. Then, Thelma said, “Yes, sir, that sound like it might be him.”
“He’s back there,” said the man, indicating the door to a hallway. Above the frame was a brass sign that said simply, “Cells.”
Luther said, “Why you holdin’ him?”
His sister touched his arm and he knew he had spoken too sharply. “What he do, sir?” she asked the deputy from beneath humble, lowered eyes.
Stewart gave Luther an appraising glance that said plainly, I’m going to keep an eye on you, then lifted a paper off his desk and gave a quick glance before turning to Thelma with another of his humorless smiles.
“We got him for assault and battery,” he said. “Seems he busted up a bar.”
“I see,” said Thelma. Luther marveled at the steadiness of her voice. “And you mind tellin’ me, sir, who did he assault?”
“Man named Gil Hodges. Real popular fella. Well known in these parts.”
“So what happens now?” asked Thelma.
“Now? Oh, he’ll be our guest till he go to trial. That’ll likely be next week sometime. I expect he’ll end up in the state prison after that. Look like a pretty open-and-shut case. Lot of witnesses. And I can tell you for a fact, the judge we got, he don’t much cotton to public brawling. I’d say this boy is lookin’ at a good five years, minimum. And that’s if the judge is in a good mood. Five more if he ain’t.”
“Yes, sir,” said Thelma. “Sir, is there a reason he didn’t call his family? Don’t he get a free phone call?”
“Didn’t want it,” said Stewart.
Thelma’s eyes narrowed. “You told him he had a phone call comin’, but he didn’t take it?”
“Yep. That’s about the size of it.”
“I see,” said Thelma. “Well, can we see him?”
“I suppose there ain’t no harm in it,” said the deputy with a shrug, removing a ring of keys from a peg on the wall. “Need to see some ID, though. And I’m gon’ have to search this buck you brung with you.”
Wordlessly, Luther lifted his arms as the deputy came around the counter. He endured the rough, fast pat down, then reached into his wallet and pulled out his driver’s license as the deputy was mashing at Thelma’s hair—“You’d be surprised what some gals stick in there,” he explained. Finally, he examined the driver’s license she proffered from her wallet.
“You’re from New York,” he said.
“Yes,” said Thelma. “Born here, though.”
He was paging through the photos and cards in her wallet. He stopped when he saw a studio-posed portrait of George and Thelma beaming with a young Adam between them. “Look at the happy family,” he said, grinning. “I suppose this here is the boy’s daddy?”
“Yes,” said Thelma. Her voice was still light and sociable.
“Guess they allow all kinds of stuff up there in New York City.” Stewart paged to the next card. Luther saw that it was an ID card from the New York State Bar Association. The grin fell from Stewart’s face. “You a lawyer?”
“Yes, I am,” said Thelma.
Whereupon Stewart snapped the wallet closed, returned it to her purse, and handed it back. “Suppose I should tell you, then,” he said, “your boy put up a real struggle when they come to take him in. It’s a wonder they didn’t add resistin’ to his charges. He got banged up pretty good, though. Nothin’ that won’t heal,” he added, “but he sure is a sight.” He gave a queasy chuckle.
Thelma was not amused. Something flared in her eyes as the white man laughed his uneasy laugh. But whatever it was didn’t make it to her voice. She said, “Thank you for letting me know,” and her tone was so deferential and polite she might have been talking to a mechanic who had just told her she was almost due for an oil change.
“Can we see him now?” asked Luther.
The deputy nodded and waved them to follow him into a dimly lit hallway. There were two cells with floor-to-ceiling bars, a stone wall between them. In the first, marked above the door with a paper sign reading “White,” five men were caged, two lucky enough to be reclined on cots, three more sitting on thin mattresses on the concrete floor. In the second cage, marked with another paper sign, this one reading “Niggers,” a lone man lay sprawled haphazardly on a cot, one leg drawn up, the other trailing the floor, a forearm thrown over his eyes. His shirt had been white. Now half of it was the coppery red-brown of dried blood. He stirred at the sound of people moving outside his cell. The arm came down and what they saw made Thelma’s hand fly to her mouth to catch a sob.
“Mom?” he said.
Adam’s voice carried surprise, but also dismay. Luther could tell from her eyes that his sister had missed this. She was fixated on the ruined face. Not that he could blame her.
Her son’s right eye was a plum, as round and black as the juiciest summer fruit on the tree. His cheeks and temple were nested with abrasions. A V of old blood began at his nose and ran to a point on his chin.
She stared an accusation at the deputy. “He resisted,” said Stewart. His voice had risen an octave.
Thelma said, “Yes, I heard you say that.” Her own voice had gone cold.
There was a moment. Then the deputy made an awkward retreat. “Y’all take your time,” he called as he exited the hallway. “No rush.”
Adam winced as he stood and moved in an old man’s shuffle toward the bars. “What are you doing here?”
“Where else would I be when I hear my son has gone missing?” asked Thelma.
“You came all the way down here? You didn’t have to do that.”
“You’re my son,” she said simply.
“But I know how much you hate it here.”
“You’re my son,” she said again.
Adam sighed. “Well, how did you find me?” he asked. “How did you know I was here?”
“That’s your mother’s doing,” said Luther. “Women’s intuition, I guess.”
“Why didn’t you call?” asked Thelma.
“I didn’t want anybody to see me like this. I didn’t want you to worry.”
It made Luther angry. “You didn’t think we’d worry when George went back to Selma and didn’t see you there?”
Adam’s expression turned sheepish. “I guess I didn’t think about that,” he admitted.
“That’s about the dumbest goddamn thing I ever heard in my life,” snapped Luther.
He’d have said more, but Thelma gave him a look and he just shook his head and turned away.
Adam said, “Mom, when I found out what happened to you, when I learned …”
Thelma raised her hand like a traffic cop. “We’ll talk about that later,” she said, briskly.
“You gon’ tell us what happened?” asked Luther.
“Yes,” said Thelma. “This deputy claims you assaulted some man named Gil Hodges, then resisted arrest.”
“He’s lying,” said Adam. He regarded his mother. “I’m so sorry,” he said. His voice was soft, and Luther knew the apology encompassed more than this predicament.
“What happened?” pressed Thelma.
Adam sighed. “I got off the bus,” he said. “I was looking for anybody from that guy’s family, that Earl Hodges. I don’t know what I wanted. Maybe just to scream at one of them for what he did. I know that makes no sense. I think maybe I also wanted to see who it is I come from, who my family is. I guess I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“Go on,” said Thelma.
“Not much to tell,” said Adam. “I wandered around for an hour. Started at the bus station, went to the thrift store, the grocery, the church up there on that hill. Told them I was tryin’ to find my father’s family. They all asked me who my father was, and I told ’em it was Earl Ray Hodges. They acted like they never heard the name, but I could tell they were lying.
“I went into one of those bars on the square and was talkin’ to the bartender when these three fellas came up behind me and one of them tapped me on the shoulder. When I turned, he said, ‘I understand you’re asking about my brother.’”
“Small towns,” said Luther. “Everybody know everything.”
“Yeah,” said Adam, “I guess I didn’t really understand that. He told me his brother was dead. I told him I knew that. He asked me what I wanted. I told him Earl Ray Hodges was my father—my biological father, at least—and I guess I just wanted to see what kind of people I came from.”
Adam paused, looking down. “I’m sorry, Mom,” he whispered.
“What happened next?” prodded Thelma.
“He got mad. I mean, real mad. Called me a goddamn liar. Said people have been lying on his brother ever since ‘that bitch he married’ killed him, and he was sick of it and he wouldn’t stand for nobody dirtying his brother’s name. He said Earl Ray never needed to rape nobody to get sex. He called you a whore, said you probably wanted everything you got.”
His eyes were steady on her. Thelma didn’t flinch. “And what did you say?” she asked.
“I’m your son. I couldn’t let him get away with that.”
“What did you say?” repeated Thelma.
“I told him to take it back or I’d kick his ass.”
Thelma pinched the bridge of her nose.
“I wasn’t going to just let him say that!”
“That’s when the fight started,” said Luther, not bothering to make it a question.
Adam nodded. “Wasn’t much of a fight. He shoved me, told me I better get to kickin’, ’cause he wasn’t takin’ back a goddamn thing.”
“I swung at him, I admit that, but I hit nothin’ but air. Next thing I knew, it seemed like the whole bar landed on top of me, people coming out of corners with fists and pool cues and me at the bottom of it, just trying to cover up, protect myself.”
Adam fixed his wounded gaze on Thelma. “I thought I was going to die. I probably would’ve, but somebody ran across the square and got a couple of those sheriff’s deputies and they pulled me out of there, threw me in here. They say Hodges is pressing charges against me for assault. I didn’t hit him. I didn’t hit anybody. I’m the one who got his ass kicked.”
“Alabama,” replied Thelma.
“Alabama,” echoed Luther.
“Do you see why I didn’t want you coming down here?” said Thelma, her voice an angry hiss of steam. “Now, do you see?”
“I see,” said Adam. Pause. “But I wish you hadn’t come, either.”
Thelma looked at him, her head going slowly from side to side. “I guess neither of us is getting what we want,” she said.
Luther said, “What are we going to do?” He checked his watch and saw that it was 2:55. “Whatever it is, we got to be quick about it. Remember where we are.”
Thelma’s hand cupped her mouth. A vertical concentration line appeared between her eyebrows. She was silent for a long moment. Finally, she said, “Let’s go.”
“Go? Where we goin’?”
Thelma had already started down the hall. Now she stopped and turned. “We’ve got to see this Gil Hodges,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “We’ve got to make him change his mind.”