All the Sinners Bleed
S. A. Cosby
To my brother, Darrell Cosby. What we know only we could ever know.
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
—JOSEPH CONRAD
Behold, I make all things new.
—REVELATION 21:5
Charon County
Charon County was founded in bloodshed and darkness.
Literally and figuratively.
Even the name is enveloped in shadows and morbidity. Legend has it the name of the county was supposed to be Charlotte or Charles County, but the town elders waited too late and those names were already taken by the time they decided to incorporate their fledgling encampment. As the story goes, they just moved their finger down the list of names until they settled on Charon. Those men, weathered as whitleather with hands like splitting mauls, bestowed the name on their new town with no regard to its macabre nature. Or perhaps they just liked the name because a river flowed through the county and emptied into the Chesapeake like the River Styx.
Who knows? Who could know the thoughts of those long-dead men?
What is known is that in 1805 in the dead of night a group of white landowners, chafing at the limits of their own manifest destiny, set fire to the last remaining indigenous village on the teardrop-shaped peninsula that would become Charon County.
Those who escaped the flames were brought down by muskets with no regard to age, gender, or infirmity. That was the first of many tragedies in the history of Charon. The cannibalism of the winter of 1853. The malaria outbreak of 1901. The United Daughters of the Confederacy picnic poisoning of 1935. The Danforth family murder-suicide of 1957. The tent revival baptismal drownings of 1968, and on and on. The soil of Charon County, like most towns and counties in the South, was sown with generations of tears. They were places where violence and mayhem were celebrated as the pillars of a pioneering spirit every Founders’ Day in the county square.
Blood and tears. Violence and mayhem. Love and hate. These were the rocks upon which the South was built. They were the foundation upon which Charon County stood.
If you had an occasion to ask some of the citizens of Charon, most of them would tell you those things were in the past. That they had been washed away by the river of time that flows ever forward. They might even say those things should be forgotten and left to the ages.
But if you had asked Sheriff Titus Crown, he would have said that anyone who believed that was a fool or a liar. Or both. And if you had an occasion to speak with him after that long October, he would have told you that maybe the foundation of Charon was rotten and fetid and full of corruption, not only corruption of the flesh but of the soul. That maybe the rocks the South was built upon were shifting and splitting like the stone Moses struck with his staff. But instead of water, only blood and ichor would come pouring forth.
He might touch the scars on his face or his chest absentmindedly and lock eyes with you and say in that harsh whisper that was now his speaking voice:
“The South doesn’t change. You can try to hide the past, but it comes back in ways worse than the way it was before. Terrible ways.”
He might sigh and look away and say:
“The South doesn’t change … just the names and the dates and the faces. And sometimes even those don’t change, not really. Sometimes it’s the same day and the same faces waiting for you when you close your eyes.
“Waiting for you in the dark…”
ONE
Titus woke up five minutes before his alarm went off at 7:00 A.M. and made himself a cup of coffee in the Keurig Darlene had gotten him last Christmas. At the time she’d given it to him he’d thought it was an expensive gift for a relationship that was barely four months old. These days, Titus had to admit it was a damn good gift that he was grateful to have.
He’d gotten her a bottle of perfume.
He almost winced thinking back on it. If knowing your lover was a competition, Darlene was a gold medalist. Titus didn’t even qualify for the bronze. Over the last ten months he’d forced himself to get exponentially better in the gift-giving department.
Titus sipped his coffee.
His last girlfriend before Darlene had said he was a great boyfriend but was awful at relationships. He didn’t dispute that assessment.
Titus took another sip.
He heard the stairs creak as his father made his way down to the kitchen. That mournful cry of ancient wood had gotten him and Marquis in trouble on more than one late Friday night until Titus stopped staying out late and Marquis stopped coming home.
“Hey, while you standing there in your boxers, make me one of them there fancy cups out that machine,” Albert Crown said. Titus watched his father limp over to the kitchen table and ease himself down into one of their vinyl-covered metal chairs that would drive a hipster interior designer mad with nouveau retro euphoria. It had been a year since his father’s hip replacement and Albert still walked with a studied caution. He stubbornly refused to use a cane, but Titus saw the way his smooth brown face twisted into tight Gordian knots when a rainstorm blew in off the bay or when the temperature started to drop like a lead sinker.
Albert Crown had made his living on that bay for forty years, hauling in crab pots six days a week, fourteen hours a day off the shore of Piney Island on boats owned by folks who barely saw him as a man. No insurance, no 401(k), but all those backbreaking days and the frugality of Titus’s mother had allowed them to build a three-bedroom house on Preach Neck Road. They were the only family, Black or white, that had a house on an actual foundation. Envy had crossed the color lines and united their neighbors as the house rose from the forest of mobile homes that surrounded it like a rose among weeds.
“When we retire, we can sit on the front step in matching rocking chairs and wave to Patsy Jones as she drives by rolling her eyes,” Titus’s mother Helen had told his father at the kitchen table one night during one of those rare weekends his father wasn’t out gallivanting down at the Watering Hole or Grace’s Place.
Titus put a cup in the Keurig, slid a pod in the filter, and set the timer.
But, like so many things in life, his mother’s gently petty retirement plan was not meant to be. She died long before she could ever retire from the Cunningham Flag Factory. Patsy Jones was still driving by and rolling her eyes, though.
“Which one you put in there?” Albert asked. He opened the newspaper and started running his finger over the pages. Titus could see his lips move ever so slightly. His mother had been the more adventurous reader, but his father never let the sun set on the day without going through the newspaper.
“Hazelnut. The only one you like,” Titus said.
Albert chuckled. “Don’t you tell that girl that. She got us that value pack. That was nice of her.” He licked his finger and turned the page. As soon as he did, he sucked his teeth and grunted.
“Them rebbish boys don’t never let up, do they? Now they gonna have a goddamn parade for that statue. Them boys just mad somebody finally had the nerve to tell them they murdering traitor of a granddaddy won’t shit,” Albert spat.
“Ricky Sours and them Sons of the Confederacy boys been knocking down the door of my office for the past two weeks,” Titus said. He took another sip.
“What for?” Albert asked.
“They wanna make sure the sheriff’s office will ‘fulfill its duties and maintain crowd control’ in case any protesters show up. You know, since Ricky is Caucasian, I’m biased against them because of my ‘cultural background,’” Titus said. He kept his voice flat and even, the way he’d learned in the Bureau, but he caught his father’s eyes over the top of the newspaper.
Albert shook his head. “That Sours boy wouldn’t have said that to Ward Bennings. Hell, Ward would’ve probably marched with ’em with his star on his chest. ‘Cultural background.’ Shit. He means cuz you a Black man and he a racist. Lord, son, I don’t know how you do it sometimes,” Albert said.
“Easy. I just imagine Sherman kicking their murderous traitorous great-granddaddies in the teeth. That’s my Zen,” Titus said. His voice stayed flat, but Albert burst out laughing.
“Down at the store last Friday, Linwood Lassiter asked one of the boys with the sticker on his truck why don’t they put a statue to … what’s that boy name? The one with them eggs?” Albert said.
“Benedict Arnold?” Titus offered.
“Yeah, build a statue to that boy, since they like traitors so goddamn much. That boy said something about heritage and history and Linwood said all right, how about a statue to Nat Turner? That boy got in his truck and spun tires and rolled coal on us. But he didn’t have an answer,” Albert said.