Chapter Eleven
I FOLLOW A NEW LEAD
DANIEL WAS ON his knees weeding the garden again when I left the house. He glanced up when I came out the front door, but he didn’t say anything. I watched him for a minute. I wanted to talk to him, but I saw the knot of tension in his back and the stiffness in his shoulders and felt his anger as he ripped weeds from around pink geraniums.
“The trial transcript is missing,” I said. “The transcript from your brother’s trial.”
He didn’t react.
“I went to the courthouse and asked for it. But it’s gone. The clerk there said he had no idea what happened to it.”
Still nothing.
“I’m staying at Miss Nearing’s rooming house. You know her? She runs the newspaper. Her father ran it before her. He covered the trial. The newspaper picture I showed you came from Mr. Nearing’s newspaper. But when I went looking for articles about the trial, I couldn’t find anything. All the newspapers from that time are missing. Miss Nearing says she doesn’t know what happened to them. And there’s nothing in the newspaper files either. It’s all gone.”
Daniel stood up and spun around.
“Seems like there’s all kinds of stuff missing from that newspaper,” he said, his whole body tense with anger.
“What do you mean?”
He gave me the once-over and then dismissed me.
“Never mind.”
“Don’t you think it’s a pretty big coincidence that everything to do with your brother’s arrest and trial has vanished?” I asked.
Silence hung between us like a curtain.
“He filed an appeal,” Daniel said at last.
“Oh?”
“The lawyer he had for the trial, he was no good.”
“What do you mean?” More to the point, how did he know? Daniel was a toddler when his brother died.
“He was my brother. I grew up here. I spent my whole life listening to people talk about him. You think I didn’t want to find out everything I could about what happened? But Ma, she never wanted to talk about it. I used to ask her about TJ. It made her cry every time. After a while I stopped asking her and started listening to what other people were saying. Mostly, it wasn’t anything I wanted to hear. Everyone in town”—he gestured with his head—“says he did it. No wonder Ma cried all the time.” He looked me in the eye. “There was an old man—he was old at the time of the trial. Ezekiel Washington. He was the janitor at the courthouse. When I was twelve, our class did a field trip to the courthouse. It was supposed to teach us all about what a great system we have here, how justice is impartial and blind, all that stuff.” He gave a twist to a lot of the words he spat out, like great and impartial and blind. “Mr. Washington was emptying the wastebaskets in the courtroom we were in, and when Mrs. White, my teacher, gave her little speech about justice being blind, I heard a sound, like a snort. We all did. We all looked at Ezekiel. Mrs. White knew he’d made the noise, but he looked at her as if he couldn’t think where the sound came from. She gave him the evil eye. You should have seen her. She was from Mississippi. The only reason she was up here is that she married a farmer here. A pig farmer. She tried to act like we were all the same, but you could tell she didn’t like having me and some of the others in her class.”
“What others?”
Daniel gave me a withering look. “She was used to segregated schools. But they haven’t had segregated schools in this state since 1949. She didn’t like having me in her class. And she didn’t like hearing that sound. She asked Ezekiel if he’d made it. He told her, No, ma’am, polite as pie. When she looked away, he winked at me. As we were leaving, he asked me my name. When I told him, he asked was I related to Thomas Jefferson. I said yes. It was the end of the day. Mrs. White had already dismissed us. So I stayed a while to talk to him. He was the one who told me that TJ’s lawyer was no good.”
“That the lawyer was assigned by the court. That he didn’t raise a single objection during the whole trial. That he barely asked any questions. And that Ezekiel could see that TJ wasn’t happy with that. He said one time TJ had to elbow his lawyer to get him to wake up. He’d dozed off right there in court!”
“Why didn’t he hire a new lawyer?”
“He couldn’t find one in time. The trial began while he was still looking. He wanted to get a lawyer from New York City, from Harlem, who was supposed to be really good. But the trial started before TJ heard back from him, and it was over fast because nobody objected to the sheriff’s testimony about the confession. The jury took all of ten minutes to reach a verdict. Guilty. That’s what Ezekiel told me. TJ was sent to prison. While he was in there, he tried to get another lawyer. But they made it hard for him. He wrote letters but never heard back. He told Ma that he thought they weren’t mailing his letters like they were supposed to. He tried to get her to smuggle out some letters, but they searched her when she left, and they confiscated them. So he did the best he could in the prison library. He was trying to put together an appeal.”
“What happened?”
“You already know what happened. He got shot while supposedly escaping.”
I was beginning to think that something bad had taken place in Orrenstown. White people in town had told me how much TJ was resented, that they didn’t like the way he strutted, as they put it, and refused to step aside. They didn’t like the way he thought he was equal to them. But I was getting a different story from Mrs. Jefferson and Daniel. TJ had joined the army because he wanted to serve his country. But instead of being treated like everyone else, he found that the prejudice he’d faced all his life had followed him into basic training. It was still there when he returned home after the war with a white friend. When I put together everything I had discovered so far—and added to the mix the fact that every single record related to the murder and the trial had somehow disappeared—it wasn’t hard to at least suspect that someone else might have killed Mr. LaSalle and that somehow Mr. Jefferson had been railroaded for it. It was a great story. Okay, so it wasn’t the story I had set out to write. But I bet if Nellie Bly had stumbled on it, she wouldn’t have let it go until she got to the bottom of it. That pretty much made up my mind.
“Where can I find Mr. Washington?”
Daniel’s smile was wry as he nodded in the direction of the cemetery.
“Oh,” I said when I understood his meaning. Another dead end. Always another dead end. I looked at Daniel and thought about what he had just said. “Supposedly escaping?”
“TJ wasn’t stupid.”
“But you were just—”
“A kid when it happened? I know. Ma keeps telling me. If I hear it one more time…” He paused and took a deep breath to calm himself. “I’m not stupid either. When I was a kid, there were pictures of TJ all over the house.” I didn’t remember seeing any during my brief visit. “Over the years, Ma took them down. She never said so, but I think it hurt her too much to look at them.”
I could see that. It was plain from everything Mrs. Jefferson had said and from the soft way she said his name that she still loved him fiercely.
“I would stare at those pictures and pester Ma for information about him. But she would never tell me very much—except that he was my brother and a war hero and he died and was buried out in the cemetery. If you look out Ma’s bedroom window, you’ll see the gravestone.” He nodded toward it. “I was like most kids. I was curious. But when I started asking people, I heard all kinds of stories. Black people, like Ezekiel, they told me that TJ would never have killed anyone, that they didn’t believe it. White people—the ones in this town anyway—they all said it was true. It had to be true because he confessed and because a jury decided he was guilty. But they can’t both be right.”
“Did you find out what really happened?”
“I know what really happened. My brother didn’t kill that man. He had no reason to.” Before I could open my mouth to say anything—and I wasn’t sure I was even going to—he said, “I know what they say. I’ve heard it all. But I don’t believe it.”
“Someone told me that there were witnesses to an argument between your brother and Mr. LaSalle.”
“There was a witness. One. And he was white. He didn’t like TJ.”
He was right about that.
“There must be someone else who saw what happened,” I said.
“If there is, I don’t know who it is. But I’ll tell you what. I’m not at all surprised that those courthouse files are missing. It fits with what I’ve been telling you.” He picked up the watering can.
“What about your brother’s grave?”
“What about it?”
“Someone vandalized it.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Do you have any idea who did it?”
“Ma says it was likely some ignorant fool.”
“Do you know why they did it? Was there any kind of message? Or threat?”
“Not that I know of. If there was, Ma never said.” He tipped the can to water the flowers. “I guess now you’ll go back to wherever you came from.”
“Maybe,” I said. But even as I spoke, I knew that I wasn’t going anywhere.
The sun was hammering the asphalt, sending waves of burning heat up my ankles and calves and parching my throat. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Nothing moved; there wasn’t even a breath of breeze. As I hiked back to Orrenstown, all I could think about was Mrs. Jefferson’s ice-cold lemonade. I would have done just about anything for another glass of that, with chunks of ice floating in it. But it wasn’t going to happen. It reminded me of chaperoned trips into Hope when I was little. It was always a treat to walk into town with one of the older girls. A treat and torture because going into town meant walking by Loretta’s Diner and smelling the freshly baked crullers that I had no money to buy. It meant stopping in front of the Orpheus to see what was playing but never having the money to go inside and watch a movie. In summer, it meant seeing kids strolling with their parents—parents!—licking double-scoop ice-cream cones. Sometimes it had seemed that stepping beyond the fence surrounding the Home meant being reminded of all the things that were forever out of my reach.
I did now what I used to force myself to do then: I thought about something else. I kept walking.
I wondered how the others were doing, especially Malou, who had at least one parent who was black. She had no idea which one. I wondered where she was and what she was doing, and whether she’d run into any of the prejudice I’d seen here. It would be personal for her. At the orphanage, she was treated like everyone else. But out here in the real world… Meeting up with what I’d witnessed so far could change everything in Malou’s life.
I thought, too, about Mr. Jefferson. I couldn’t figure out what he had to do with me. For one fleeting moment I had thought—even hoped—that Patrice LaSalle was my father, that even though I had missed the chance to meet him, and he himself had no family left, I at least would have had some idea of where I’d come from and maybe some possibility of finding out more about my father’s family. I might even—and this was the hardest dream to conjure and then give up on—have been able to find out who my mother was. She might still be alive. Children got put in orphanages for lots of reasons, not just because they were orphans. There were girls at the Home whose mothers had had no choice but to give them up. Girls whose mothers hadn’t been married. Girls whose mothers had done shameful things that led to babies being born. Unwanted babies. Bastard babies. Babies that were looked down on by people, unless and until they were adopted into proper families and given proper names, until and unless their old selves, their original selves, were erased and they were given new identities. Lucky girls, for the most part, although we had all heard stories—rumors, really—about girls being adopted and then treated as housemaids. Unhappy girls whose dreams of a real family had been dashed. Girls who soon wished they were back in the Home.
But that was in the past now. My life was finally my own to shape, the way a potter shapes a bowl. It was mine to fill however I wanted. We are all vessels, Mrs. Hazelton said. And we all decide what we will carry within ourselves. Will we carry love or hate? Compassion or disdain? Charity or selfishness? Hope or despair? Justice or injustice? I used to tune out when she launched into her little sermons, which she usually did when she invited the seven of us to her study to sip tea and nibble biscuits like ladies. Now I saw what she meant. The people in Orrenstown were vessels too. Some of them had filled themselves with prejudice and hatred. Others, like Mrs. Jefferson, overflowed with love and longing. And what about me? I had come down here looking for my past. Maybe I would find it, and maybe I wouldn’t. But I had the feeling that I might discover something else. Something that could change my life. Launch me on my dream. It’s what Nellie Bly had done. She started by speaking out for women and against the limitations imposed on us. She broadened out from there, seeking out injustice and shining a journalistic light on it. She made a difference. Maybe I could make a difference too. And write one heck of a good story.
But how was I going to get the facts? The newspaper coverage was missing. The newspaper files were missing. The court records were missing. Where else could I look for information?
The sheriff’s office.
There had to be something at the sheriff’s office. The sheriff had arrested Mr. Jefferson. Not Sheriff Hicks, but the one before him. There had to be police records and files.
I picked up my pace despite the heat and my thirst, and finally—hallelujah!—I saw buildings on the horizon. I stopped at a grocery store and bought a bottle of soda, half of which I downed on the spot in one long, unladylike gulp. I sipped the rest as I followed the cashier’s directions to the sheriff’s office at the far end of the street. It was a small brick building with a cornerstone that had been laid in 1903. I went inside and approached a counter that divided the room in half. A few desks stood on the other side. All but one was empty. A woman sat at that desk. She looked like a secretary, with her neat pearls and twinset, and she was on the phone. Another woman, a black woman, pushed a cleaning cart between the two rows of desks. She stopped at the windows, pulled out a bottle of cleaner and began to spray the windows. The woman on the phone glanced at me and held up a finger. She dispatched her caller quickly, removed her eyeglasses and asked if I needed help.
“I’d like to speak to Sheriff Hicks.”
“Is he expecting you?”
“No. But he knows me.” I gave her my name.
The woman looked me over. “You’re that girl everyone is talking about, aren’t you?”
Really? Everyone was talking about me?
“You’re the one who’s been asking about Tom Jefferson,” the woman said.
“Did you know him?”
“I didn’t live here at the time. But I’ve heard about him.”
I wondered which story she had heard.
“I really need to speak to Sheriff Hicks,” I said.
The woman hesitated a moment but finally picked up the phone and punched a button. She kept her voice low as she spoke into the mouthpiece. She hung up and said, “He’ll be right out.”
Sure enough, a door opened at the back of the room, and Sheriff Hicks appeared. He smiled when he saw me.
“What can I do for you, young lady?”
I glanced at the woman. She was leaning forward over her desk, all ears.
“Can I talk to you for a minute? In private?”
Sheriff Hicks raised a flap in the counter to let me through. He guided me to his office and closed the door. “What’s on your mind?”
“It’s about Thomas Jefferson.”
He shook his head.
“You’ve got tongues wagging all over town, young lady.” He sank down on the chair behind his desk and fixed me with a steady gaze. “I think it’s time to level with me, Miss Cady Andrews. What really brings you to town?”
“I already told you. I’m just—”
“Writing some kind of a story before you head home to New York. Is that it?”
I nodded.
“And here you are in my office, asking about something that happened when you were a tiny baby. People are talking. And what with all the trouble that’s happening down south…” His voice trailed off, and he shook his head again, his eyes on me the whole time.
“I already said I’m not here to make trouble.” Except I wasn’t so sure anymore, not after talking to Mrs. Jefferson and Daniel.
“Uh-huh.” He eyed me speculatively. “Those kids that went down to Mississippi, they’re a lot like you. College kids. There are hundreds of them down there trying to get colored folks to register to vote. It’s stirring up a lot of bad feelings, let me tell you, all those outsiders mixing in where they’re not wanted. Some of those kids have come smack up against Mississippi tradition. Some of them have been hospitalized. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if someone was killed down there this summer. People are wondering if you’re one of them, if you’re part of the plan, showing up here and asking a bunch of questions about a colored fella.”
“I have nothing to do with anything that’s happening in Mississippi. And anyway, people have a right to vote, don’t they?”
“If that’s what they want to do. They also have a right to be left alone if they don’t care to vote. They have a right not to be harassed by a bunch of college kids who don’t know what they’re talking about and who listen to people who don’t know what they’re talking about either. Not to mention people who make their living by stirring things up. Professional agitators.” He leaned back in his chair. “What is it that you want to ask me?”
“Can I see the police file on Thomas Jefferson? I’d also like to see anything you have on Patrice LaSalle.”
He studied me for a few seconds.
“First you ask about the Jefferson boy and what he did. Now you want to know about the fella he murdered. Care to tell me what your real interest is in that case?”
I repeated what I’d told him when I first met him. “I heard about it. I got curious. I think it would make a good story.”
“For your school paper?”
“Maybe.”
“You know what they say about curiosity.”
“I know what they say it does to cats,” I told him. “But I’m not a cat. So, can I please see the files?”
“No, you cannot.” Before I could ask why not, he continued. “In the first place, police files are not open to the public. Second, those files no longer exist. This isn’t the original sheriff’s office. The original one was flooded out.”
“And the records?”
“Ruined.”
Dead end. Again.
“You didn’t happen to be working here at the time of the murder, did you, Sheriff Hicks?”
“I was here,” he said. My heart sped up. “But I wasn’t involved in the investigation. The sheriff took care of that himself.”
“But you’re familiar with the case—with what happened?”
“I know the broad strokes.”
“Can you tell me about it—about what you know?”
He sighed. “You’re persistent, I’ll give you that. But there’s no advantage to digging into the past, especially that particular slice of it, particularly not now, when people are already worked up about what’s happening down in Mississippi. You don’t want to go stirring up all kinds of bad memories, do you? Besides, aren’t your folks missing you? Don’t you think you should head home?” He stood up.
The message was clear: he wasn’t going to answer my question.
The woman who was washing windows looked over her shoulder at me when I left Sheriff Hicks’s office. So did the woman at the desk. Her eyes stayed on me as I walked across the room. I glanced at her as I closed the door behind me. She was on her way to the sheriff’s office. The gossip train was rolling on.