“Titus, what’s the status of the investigation? I haven’t heard from you all day,” Scott said.
“I posted a report on the sheriff’s office home page. That’s all you need to know for now,” Titus said.
“What that’s supposed to mean? All I need to know for now?” Scott said.
“It means that’s all you need to know, Scott. That means we are still investigating. It means you need to handle county business. Pass a budget. Approve some new stop signs. I don’t report to you. And I’m getting tired of having to remind you of that fact,” Titus said.
“You know, it’s ironic a school shooting happened on the anniversary of the day you were elected. Seems to me that’s the kind of thing people remember. Seems to me if I was an elected official, I’d want to keep people who could help me in my good graces,” Scott said. Titus knew that was supposed to be a threat, but Scott hadn’t helped him get elected and he damn sure wasn’t going to stop him from getting reelected if Titus chose to run again.
“That’s not ironic. Irony is a state of affairs that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects. If I had said that there would never be a school shooting on the anniversary of my election and then there was a school shooting, that would be ironic. What happened today is tragic, not a political football,” Titus said.
Scott chuckled ruefully. “Showing off that fancy college degree, huh, Titus? You know I couldn’t get into UVA. Too many quotas had to be filled.”
“If that’s what lets you sleep at night, Scott, you go right on believing that,” Titus said.
“I guess I’m a racist now, right? Seems like anybody who speaks the facts gets called that nowadays,” Scott said. Titus could hear the aggrieved sneer through the phone. Scott was the type of man who complained about the world being too sensitive these days without ever acknowledging the irony of his own fragility or privilege. Where some saw equality, he saw conspiracies against his manhood, his identity. He would tell anyone who would listen that he had the biggest house in the county and a Jaguar and a Hummer because of his own hard work, not because he was white or the son of the richest family in the county. Scott seemed to think he was a brave new soldier in the current culture wars.
Titus thought Scott was a spoiled brat. A spoiled brat who had never had to work for anything, who truly appreciated nothing but thought he was owed everything. Even a spot at the premier university in the state.
“Two things. First, I didn’t get into UVA on a quota. I got a football scholarship and an academic one. Second, if I ever thought you were thinking about saying something to me that could be construed as racist, we would have a conversation about that. In person.” Titus paused between “that” and “in person” just long enough so Scott could pick up the threat he was implying.
“There is going to be a candlelight vigil on the courthouse green for Mr. Spearman tonight at nine. Just thought you should know,” Scott said.
Titus switched the handset to his other ear.
“We’re still in the midst of an investigation, Scott,” Titus said. “Might be better to hold off.” That was as much of a warning as he felt comfortable giving Scott. He could have told him that Jeff Spearman was most likely a pedophile and possibly a serial killer. He could have told him Latrell had indeed done them all a favor. He could have told him that there was a third, as-yet-unidentified, coconspirator walking around free as a bird. But all that information was part of a currently active investigation. Titus wanted to get the tapes to the state police or even the Bureau to verify their authenticity. Same with the photos. They needed to crack open his computer and see what sickening evidence might be on that as well. There were t’s that needed to be crossed and i’s that needed to be dotted. Let the county have their communal moment of silence. They could grieve for who they thought Jeff Spearman had been before he told them what Jeff Spearman really was. Tonight was the end of innocence for a whole generation of Charon County citizens.
After he made an official announcement, every person who had ever walked through one of Jeff Spearman’s geography classes, who had laughed at his silly suit of many countries he wore every year on Earth Day (a hodgepodge garment made of flags from almost every country on the planet), who had high-fived him after a debate or one-act play competition, would question every single interaction they had ever had with the man. Every hug, every shoulder pat, every conversation would become a clouded crystal ball that had failed them.
Let them hold on to their idea of Jeff Spearman for one more day. The awful truth would be with them all forever soon enough.
“Well, now, I don’t answer to you either, and the community wants to gather. Tonight at nine. I assume you’ll have some of your people there. The people of Charon County are watching you. They are watching you very closely,” Scott said.
“Good night, Scott,” Titus said. He hung up before Scott could say something else to make his blood pressure rise. Titus put on his hat and walked through the front lobby. Cam was watching the front door. Kathy was a few minutes late.
“She’ll be here in a few,” Titus said.
“I know. It’s … today is one of them days I kinda wanna go home and hug my nephew and my sister real tight,” Cam said. Titus nodded.
Cam rubbed his chin. “When I first came back, Mr. Spearman saw me in the Safeway. He spoke to me. He didn’t look away. He didn’t … it didn’t seem like he felt sorry for me. A lot of people couldn’t even look me in the eye.”
“There’s people who thought Danny Rolling was a hell of a singer,” Titus said.
“Who’s Danny Rolling?” Cam asked.
“The Gainesville Ripper. Killed five college students over four days back in 1990. Cut one of their heads off and put it on a shelf near the body. He was one of our case studies at the Bureau.”
“Jesus Christ,” Cam said.
“Terrible people can do good things sometimes. But they like doing the terrible things more. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Titus said.
* * *
Titus pulled out of the parking lot and slipped onto the road. The night had come and covered the sky above Charon County like a black blanket full of pinpricks. He turned right and drove past the courthouse building. Ricky Sours and his neo-Confederates had installed solar lights around the statue of Ol’ Rebel Joe. Titus thought the lights looked cheap and disposable, much like the statue itself. It had been erected in 1923 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, part of a coordinated and extensive propaganda campaign to reframe traitors as patriots.
After World War I, thousands of Black veterans returned home after saving democracy from the Kaiser with a renewed sense of dignity. They were heroes, after all. Why should they have to bow and scrape to anybody? Then the Red Summer happened and white men, like Everett Cunningham, Scott’s great-grandfather, made it their mission to remind these heroes of their place. One didn’t have to dig too far into the back issues of The Charon Register to see an article about Everett leading a group of “patriots” up to D.C. to show these Black men they were still just boys to them. That Everett came back minus an eye but with gallons of blood on his hands was a bit harder to find in the public record.
To cement their perceived dominance, the Daughters had erected hundreds of Civil War monuments across the South as the Red Summer waned. Most of them were made of low-grade bronze or limestone, mass-produced and erected as fast and inexpensively as possible. These effigies served two purposes.
To create a false narrative of honor and sacrifice that Confederate sympathizers could embrace in place of the shameful pall of treason that was their actual birthright.
And to remind Black Southerners that to some of their white neighbors they were just escaped cattle meant to be sacrificed on the altar of the Lost Cause.
When they were kids, around the time they got their driver’s licenses, Titus and Cal and Big Bobby had talked about looping a rope around that statue that sat in front of the courthouse and dragging it down off its pedestal and down the road to the dump. If Titus closed his eyes, he could see the cloud of sparks that would have followed Big Bobby’s ’84 red and black Dodge Ram as they dragged that hunk of tin and copper slag down Route 18.