“You know I do.”
“He used to quote scripture all the time. You know what scripture says about the truth?”
“What?”
“It’s a terrible thing to fall into the grace of God.” Snake smiles strangely, and I remember all the depraved acts this preacher’s son has committed in his life. “That’s it, right there. Are you sure you’re ready for that?”
“You’re the one ought to be worried about meeting God,” Lincoln says.
“Let’s hear it,” I say, gesturing with my gun.
Snake clucks his tongue a couple of times, then looks at the floor. “Me and Sonny had been out there a couple weeks before Viola died. Just to remind her of the deal she made back in ’68. We told her to stop talking to Henry Sexton, and if she didn’t, well . . . we’d have to shut her up for good.
“I could see right off she wasn’t going to stop. I wanted to go ahead and finish her, but Forrest didn’t want any trouble that might get in the papers. Forrest was always more worried about the dollar than anything else. So, me and Sonny would ride out that way every day or so, see who was out there. We saw Doc Cage’s car quite a few times, sometimes his nurse. But then we saw Henry’s car again. I decided we had to finish it, no matter what Forrest said.”
Maybe Snake really is crazy. I can’t believe he’s about to confess to killing Viola in front of her son.
“So that night, we parked in the trees up above the house, where Doc testified he saw our truck—Devine’s truck, really, but we were in it. Anyway, Doc was already there when we got there that night. I figured we’d wait for him to leave, then go in and do it. Well, after about fifteen minutes, Doc comes out and drives off. But just as we was walking down there, here comes another car.” Snake looks up at me, his eyes shining brighter. “And who’s in it . . . but your mama? Mrs. Peggy Cage, mistress of the plantation.”
My face feels hot. I start to glance at Lincoln, but I can feel his gaze on me like a lamp. He wants to know if Snake is making this up.
“She was in there a while, then she come out in a hurry. Once she drove out, me and Sonny went in.”
I want to say This is bullshit, but Lincoln would hear the lie in my voice.
Snake looks at Lincoln and shrugs. “When we got in there, your mama was gone. She looked just like she did in the picture I saw from that video. There was no tape in that camera, either.”
“You’re lying,” Lincoln says. “He’s lying, right?”
“He’s lying,” I affirm.
“You wish I was,” Snake says. “You had no idea, did you?” His eyes watch mine with almost sexual pleasure. “Thought you wanted the truth, huh? The truth is, your mama killed the woman your daddy used to screw back in the day. Maybe out of anger, maybe out of trying to keep things secret. Or maybe just out of shame.”
“Tell me he’s lying,” Lincoln says.
“He is. My mother was there that night, all right, but he’s only telling part of the story.”
“She what?” Lincoln asks, unbelieving.
“I just found out today. Dad didn’t want to go through with the suicide pact. To fool your mother, he injected a diluted solution of morphine into a deep vein, to give himself time to process everything she’d told him. About you, especially. But Mom had followed him there that night. She’d followed him a few nights earlier, too, and discovered he was seeing your mother again. That second time, Mom went into the house after he left, to find out exactly what was going on. Viola woke up while she was in there. They talked, and your mother begged mine to do what Dad had been unable to do.”
“Bullshit,” Snake says.
Hot anger rises in my gullet. “It’s the truth! Mom tried to do what Viola wanted, but she screwed up. She was the one who botched that morphine injection. She didn’t have the skill to hit in the vein.”
“So she injected adrenaline instead,” Snake says. “However you slice it, she killed the nurse.” The wily old bastard fixes Lincoln in his gaze. “You see? I didn’t kill your mama, boy.”
“Yes, you did,” I insist, wondering if there could be any truth to what he’s saying. “My mother left thinking she’d succeeded. But Dad came back, just as he’d planned to do when he left. He found Viola still sedated, and he found the tape in the camera. He saw on the tape that Mom had been there, what she’d tried to do, and that ended up being the thing that drove everything that happened afterward—his desire to protect his wife from a potential murder charge.”
“Who told you that fairy tale?” Snake asks in a taunting voice. “Your daddy, I’ll bet.”
“They both told me—separately.”
“Because they finally got their story straight. They had months to work on it before that trial, didn’t they? How many people died to protect your mama, Mayor? The mistress of the plantation couldn’t go to jail for killin’ an old used-up slave, could she? Even if that slave kept the master’s bed warm all those years ago—”
“Shut up,” Lincoln mutters.
Black glee fills Snake’s laugh. Our suffering is like liquor to him. “I never killed your mama, boy. And now you know it.”
I hear Lincoln take a long breath, and when it passes out, I feel him shifting into another state of consciousness, like a truck downshifting to climb a hill.
“You did worse than kill her,” he says, his bass voice nearly inaudible. “You broke her. You wounded her soul.”
At last I turn and meet my brother’s eyes. All I see there is pain. He will call me to account for keeping what I knew from him, but not until this business is done. As I stare, I see a question in his face: Do you want to stay in here, or do you want to go outside while I do it?
“Wait, now,” Wilma Deen says, as though talking to herself. “Hold up, mister. Don’t do this. I can’t die like this. This ain’t fair.”
“Fair?” echoes Alois, mocking her. “Fair? I am so goddamn sick of your shit—”
Wilma Deen slaps Alois so hard that the sound reverberates through the little shack. For maybe two seconds, the kid gapes at her; then he slugs her in the temple. He looks like he’s gearing up to do it again when Lincoln fires a bullet into the couch an inch from his shoulder. I don’t know if Lincoln meant to miss or not, and I sense that the next bullet is going into someone’s head.
“I didn’t kill nobody,” Wilma says, first softly, then with escalating fear. “I didn’t kill nobody. I threw the acid on that girl, but that’s it, I swear to God.”
She looks up at me, then Lincoln, her eyes imploring us. “I didn’t kill your mama, sir. I never even met her. Snake and Sonny done it—just like they killed my brother Glenn. You hear me? He bragged about it all during that trial!”
Alois’s face is so pale that I know he’d kill her if he had a weapon ready to hand.
“All my life Snake used me,” Wilma goes on, “used me and threw me away, over and over again. I ain’t dyin’ for him!”