As I drank away the afternoon, a single line spoken by my father in Judge Elder’s chambers kept repeating in my head: I hope you never do the things you’d have to do to be able to understand what I’m doing now. When I wasn’t pondering this, I was sifting through the information my parents had given me about the night Viola died. Once I knew my mother’s role, of course, all that had followed seemed simple enough to understand, and maybe even inevitable.
But no matter how much gin I consumed, I couldn’t rid myself of the image of my father’s face behind the wire screen, revealing that Viola had asked him to leave us after all, her heartrending plea carried in two desperate words: Save me. Given Viola’s pride, Dad would have known what it cost his old lover to beg him for deliverance. What had it cost him to hear her plea and then ignore it? To give up Viola for my mother, Jenny, and me? By the old standards of honor and loyalty, he did the right thing. But for himself, and for Viola . . .
Lincoln was right when he said that in some ways what our father had done to his mother was worse than killing her. Dad gave Viola a glimpse of another world, a better world in almost every way, and then took it away, condemning her to a half-life in exile from her home, with a man who did not love her. It was Viola who ended the affair, but only because she realized first how impossible any future together had been. Dad had the luxury of self-delusion; she didn’t.
In the end only one thing matters: he chose to stay with us.
I tried to leave the jail without berating him about his guilty plea, but in the end I couldn’t. All I said was, “You know, if you were religious, I might be able to understand this self-flagellation, at least a little. But you’re not. Not at all.” He smiled then—to himself, not me—and said, “I don’t believe in God, it’s true. But I guess I do believe in atonement.”
Atonement.
I told him I thought there were less dangerous ways to pay for transgressions than locking himself up with a bunch of killers and gangbangers.
“Maybe,” he allowed. “But I don’t think so. When Judge Elder turned to that jury to send them back to deliberate, I knew they were going to set me free. Four jurors looked right at me and told me that with their eyes. And I was terrified. I knew then that if I let that happen, I would never pay for what I had done. Never balance the scales. So I took away that option.”
“Oh, you left human nature behind today. You got on the Jesus train, whether you intended to or not.”
“No, Penn. I followed my conscience, that’s all.”
“And you do realize where it’s led you? What will you do in Parchman when Snake Knox sends some skinhead with a shank to kill you?”
Dad considered this, then shrugged. “Maybe I’ll get lucky. Maybe one of the black gangs will look out for me.”
“Get real.”
He looked at me the way missionaries look at nonbelievers. “Who knows what I’ll find in there? Maybe I can use my medical skills to help some people. People who really need help. Whatever happens . . . I’m resigned to it. Ready for it, even.”
When he said that, I dropped all pretense of normalcy. “You don’t have to do this. I know why you’re doing it. Because of Caitlin, and Walt, and Henry, and all the others. You feel responsible for their deaths. And you are, at least in part.” At that point I stuck my fingers through the screen and touched the papery skin of his hand. “But not one of them would want you to do this. It would break their hearts to see this.”
Dad had no answer for that, at least not one he would share with me.
When I left him, I told him nothing about my plans to try to get his plea bargain revoked. The odds of success are low, and the process could take a long time. But if Dad actually goes to the penitentiary, my mother will go mad. My cold assessment is that he will be transferred to Parchman, and that my best—and probably only—hope of getting him released before he dies there is to prove that someone else murdered Viola. And I don’t know how I can do that when the full resources of the FBI have proved insufficient to find and capture Snake Knox.
It took switching from gin to scotch to have my epiphany. After this additional chemical assault on my normal thought processes . . . I saw to the bottom of my father’s soul. Was alcohol the lantern that allowed me to see what I had failed to while I listened to Dad through the wire mesh screen of Billy Byrd’s jail? Maybe whisky was only the catalyst that shoved me out of my own way. In any case, I now understand something I did not before, and like anyone else who’s had his last illusion torn away . . . I want it back.
Dad didn’t condemn himself to prison because he chose us over Viola—to remain with his wife and children rather than leave them for a mistress who loved him. If that had been his only crime, he would have put it behind him decades ago. Viola’s desperate plea to be saved had carried more within it than a desire to spend the rest of her life with Dad—a lot more. Back at the jail, as my father talked to me about God and atonement, there was a deeper knowledge in his eyes—a knowledge of himself with all self-delusion stripped away. What remained was the truth, and the burden of it was terrible. Dad was trying to tell me what he’d realized about himself while Shad told his parable in court, but he couldn’t find the words to carry the awful weight of his discovery. Here in my house, though, alone with my whisky in the rubble of my father’s decision, I have finally plumbed the well inside him.
Dad didn’t choose to stay with us out of honor and duty. That was part of it, sure—but not all. If he had acted out of loyalty, he wouldn’t feel the need to punish himself as he has. The truth is, there never was a real choice for him. Because he never had it in him to leave his own culture and go through the hell he’d have had to endure to share a life with Viola. What would that have been like in 1968? In Mississippi, it might have meant being murdered. But even up north, it meant being ostracized. Shunned. Constant stares . . . harsh words . . . getting kicked out of restaurants and hotels. He’d have been cut off from all the comfort of his former life, maybe even from his own parents and siblings.