Mississippi Blood (Penn Cage #6)

“You should have known better than that.”

“Don’t be so sure. He came closer to leaving than he’ll admit. And if Viola had wanted him to leave us, he might have. She was a good person. Remarkable, really. In most ways . . . I couldn’t compete with her.”

“Mom, that’s—”

“There’s no use lying now, son. Anyway, the next morning, I went back to that house while Tom was at work, and I knocked on the door. Viola let me in. She was a mess, Penn. Suicidal. Nellie had a man staying with her. I think she would have killed herself if he hadn’t been there. Viola was frantic. She was certain her brother was dead. She didn’t know what to do.”

“What did she do?”

“Begged me to forgive her for harming our family, first. She said the affair had been a terrible mistake. But all she could really think about was her brother, Jimmy. She knew the Ku Klux Klan was trying to find her and kill her, but she still had to be restrained from leaving that house to hunt for her brother. I don’t think she cared what Tom thought or felt by that point. Nellie Jackson was trying to convince her to leave town. Nellie had connections in Chicago, and she wanted Viola to go there.”

“Did Nellie get her out of town?”

“Not right away. The problem was money. Viola didn’t have any. While I was there, Nellie drove up in her big Cadillac. Her man had called her. Nellie and I spoke in another room while the man watched Viola. Nellie told me Viola would need money to take care of herself until she could get a job in Chicago. Nellie’s contacts were . . . in her business. Or the gambling business. She realized that Viola needed a legitimate job. Tom would have given Viola any amount of money, of course, but not to leave town.” Mom closes her eyes, and tears fall from their outer corners. “He didn’t want her to go.”

“Mom . . . you don’t have to—”

“Yes, I do. I’ve kept it in all this time, and now . . . I need to be free of it. Nellie Jackson told me something else, Penn. She told me Viola was pregnant.”

“Had Viola told her that?”

“No. But I suppose in Nellie’s business, she’d developed a sixth sense about pregnancy. Like the old midwives, I guess.” My mother shudders under the sheet. “I was sure the baby was Tom’s. I was terrified. I told Nellie that if she could arrange to get Viola to Chicago, I would supply the money.

“That afternoon, I went down to the Building and Loan and withdrew four thousand dollars from my personal savings account—all the money I had saved from teaching. That was frightening enough, since I was worried your father might leave us. But I had to take the risk. I drove back to the house with the money and gave it to Nellie’s man. I spoke to Viola before I left, as well.”

“What did you say?’

“I asked for her promise that she would never come back to Natchez. At least not for Tom. Also that she would never try to get him to come to wherever she settled. And she promised me.” Mom shakes her head, and more tears come. “She loved him, I could tell. But she’d been shattered by something. I assumed it was because no one could find her brother, but now I know it was the rapes, and . . . everything else.”

“The trial was the first time you heard about the rapes?”

“No. Tom eventually told me about the first one, the one in Viola’s house, not the machine shop. You see, he knew nothing about my contact with Viola, so I had to play the charade of asking why she no longer worked at his office. At first he tried to act like her leaving was routine, but then his voice cracked, and he broke down. I didn’t want to press him, but if I hadn’t, he would have sensed that I knew more than I should.”

“Did he tell you about their affair?”

“No, no. Only the rape. He told me the Klan had probably murdered her brother, too. In his mind, that explained his tears, you see? He could pretend to be upset over what she’d suffered at the hands of the Klan, and not their affair. And as terrible as it sounds, I was filled with hope. Hope that Viola had gotten pregnant by one of those Klansmen, and not Tom. I feel so awful for saying that . . . but that’s what I felt.” Mom closes her eyes. “My God, that girl suffered torments.”

I start as the door opens to my left, but it’s only Verbena Jackson again. “See, I told you she’d wake up. Everything okay?”

“We’re good, thanks.”

“She’s due for another scan in about five minutes. I can stretch it to ten, if you need it.”

“We’ll try to finish up.”

The nurse nods and softly closes the door.

“What about the night Viola died, Mom? Three months ago?”

Mom stares at the ceiling as she tells me the story, as though it’s playing out above her in the muted colors of an old Super 8 movie and she’s only describing what she sees.

“The first night I followed Tom to Cora’s place, I walked down to the house and peered through a window. When I saw the woman in the sickbed, I didn’t recognize her at first. But I knew who she had to be. A few nights later, Tom went out again and stayed gone for a very long time. And he’d been upset earlier in the evening, I could tell. So I waited awhile, and then I went after him. Sure enough, his car was parked at Cora’s. I parked off the road and waited for him to leave. He eventually did, around four thirty in the morning.”

A half hour before Jenny called you. “You went inside?”

“Not right away. I was very upset. I’m not sure how long I waited to go down there, but it was still dark. When I knocked, no one answered. The doorknob turned when I tried it, so I went in. I heard soft moaning. I called out to see if anyone was home, but Viola seemed to be alone in that sickroom. I couldn’t understand why she was alone. Now, of course, I know her sister had fallen asleep at the neighbor’s house.”

“What did you do, Mom?”

A shadow passes through my mother’s eyes. She works her mouth around, then licks her lips. “I wet a dishrag and wiped Viola’s face with it, and she woke up. She was groggy but lucid enough. I guess she’d built up a very high tolerance for morphine.”

“Did she recognize you?”

“Oh, yes. She said I’d hardly changed, which was a lie, of course. But she did know me. But Penn . . . she had changed beyond recognition. When she left Natchez, she was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen, just as her son said on the stand. But when I talked to her that night, she looked ninety years old. She was sixty-five. But only her eyes held any trace of the woman I remembered.”

I push out all thoughts of the terrible life Viola endured in Chicago. “What else passed between you?”

“She asked where Tom was. I told her I’d seen him leave. She told me then that he’d tricked her. That she’d expected to die, but that Tom must not have had the heart to go through with it.”

“And? What happened then?”

“She cried a little. She asked about our family. Whether I’d been happy. She told me a little about her life in Chicago. She was terribly sad when she talked about her son.”