“Actually, I was thinking about going in and taking a look at the courtroom. But I guess it’s too late for that.”
“I’m afraid so. I just locked up, and the sheriff took my key. Normally I could take you in, but this trial’s different. The FBI was down here with dogs all evening, sniffing all over the building.”
I’m actually relieved to hear this. “It’s all right. I’m fine out here.”
“You could probably call Sheriff Byrd to let you in,” he suggests.
“I’d rather not do that.”
“No, sir, I didn’t figure.”
So even the janitors know there’s bad blood between Billy Byrd and my family.
“If you really want to get in, there is a way. But you’ve got to climb up onto the roof from the fire escape. It’s pretty dangerous.”
“No, no. I was about to head home. Haven’t we met before?”
The janitor smiles without making eye contact. “You’ve said hello to me a couple times. I’m Noel Shelton.”
The name sounds familiar. “I knew a man with your last name,” I think aloud. “He helped me find some files a few years ago. Important files. They helped me on a civil rights case.”
White teeth show in the darkness. “That was my brother, Leon. The Del Payton case, right?”
“That’s right! Does Leon still work here?”
“No, sir. Leon done passed. Three years ago, now.”
Though it’s night, the shadow of mortality falls over us. “I’m sorry. He was a good man.”
“Yes, sir. And . . . I know it’s none of my business, but please tell Dr. Cage to hold his head high tomorrow.”
This takes me by surprise. “You know about his case?”
“Shoot, everybody ’round here know.”
“What do you think about it, Noel?”
The custodian shrugs, his gaze focused over my shoulder, on the sheriff’s department. “I can’t speak for nobody else. But I know this: when Leon was sick, he like to broke the family with doctor bills. Lab bills, X-ray bills, surgeon bills, anesthesia bills, the home health. After he died, we had people calling ten times a day, and collectors coming from the hospital in Jackson. It was terrible. Me and my two sisters paid and paid, but we couldn’t begin to cover it all.”
It’s an old American story. “I’m sorry, Noel.”
“You got nothing to be sorry about. The onliest bill I knew I wanted to pay was your daddy’s, ’cause he took such good care of Leon at the end. But we paid the pushiest people first, you know? Had to. We went to see Dr. Cage at his office, to ask for some time, ’cause of the load and all. You know what he said?”
I suspect I know the answer, but I shake my head.
“Doc took his bill and studied on it for a minute. Then he folded it up and dropped it in the trash can. He said, ‘Your brother was a fine man, Mr. Shelton. Ya’ll git on home now. Don’t worry ’bout that bill no more.’”
My throat tightens, preventing me from replying.
At last the janitor’s eyes find mine, and they are filled with unspoken feeling. “I ain’t exactly clear on what they think your daddy done, Mr. Mayor. And I’m just a custodian, like my brother. But if you need somebody to stand up in that courthouse and tell the truth about Dr. Cage, I’d be proud to do it. Ain’t no better man in my book. My sister, too.”
I want to say, “Thank you, Noel,” but all I manage to do is shake his callused hand and turn back up the dark street, my eyes stinging with tears of confusion.
“Hey, Penn,” Tim calls, closing the distance to me with a graceful economy of motion that belies the speed involved. “You’ve got an audience over there.”
Following Tim’s hand, I look across the street and see a brown-shirted figure with his arms folded standing before the glass doors of the sheriff’s department. Billy Byrd. Over his big belly and burly forearms, the gold star gleams on the sheriff’s chest. His satisfied grin reaches toward me like a slapping hand. Then he calls, “I see you’re out mixin’ with the quality, as usual. Looks like you forgot your mop, though. We can get you one from inside.”
A deputy standing behind him laughs.
“There’s no upside to me going over there,” I say softly. “Right?”
“Absolutely none,” Tim agrees.
“You wanna come in and say hello to your daddy?” Byrd taunts me. “He’s a sad sight, Mayor. But I’m doin’ all I can to keep him comfortable, yes, sir. Lots of special attention.”
“How about we go kick their asses?” I suggest.
Something like harsh laughter sounds in Tim’s muscular chest. “I’d like five minutes with that bastard in a locked room. That grin would be on his asshole, not his face.” Tim takes hold of my arm and leads me up State Street. “But it’ll have to be another time. Unless you do want to check on your father?”
“Byrd wouldn’t let us in now.”
“Hey!” Sheriff Byrd calls after us. “Why don’t you two lovebirds get a room? We don’t like a lot of PDA between men around here.”
Their laughter echoes after us between the buildings, sounding exactly like that of the boys I used to play against in the cow pasture football fields of the “Christian schools” in the 1970s.
“Another time,” Tim repeats, like mantra. “Another time.”
About a mile outside Athens Point, Mississippi, two men sat smoking in a pickup truck near a crooked old shack at the edge of the woods. The driver was in his midforties, his passenger twenty years older.
“Tell me again what Kenny told you,” said the driver.
“He was passin’ by here going to check a well, and he saw the car parked here. It was an Audi S4. The one with the big engine.”
The driver nodded. “That’s the car, all right. The mayor drives it. Cage. I’ve seen him in it up on the bluff in Natchez. At the balloon races. What the hell would he be doin’ here?”
“Talkin’ to the Cat Lady, what else? Ain’t nobody else around here.”
The driver scratched his beard and looked around the car. The only visible light was a dim glow against the curtains in the rightmost room.
“You know who the Cat Lady is, don’t you?” asked the older man.
“Just an old colored woman with about a hundred cats. Why? Somethin’ special about her?”
“Not really. But a long time ago, somebody lynched her kid.”
“Klan?”
“Word was, it was the Knox brothers. The Double Eagles.”
“Huh. I never heard that.”
“Why don’t we go in there and find out what the mayor was doing here? Might just get us a fat reward. Or huntin’ rights out at Valhalla, at the least.”
The driver grunted, still thinking. Athens Point had changed a lot since Forrest Knox was killed at Valhalla.
“If we’re gonna do something, let’s do it,” said the older man. “I’m tired of sittin’ here.”
The driver took a deep drag on his cigarette. “Let’s not get hasty,” he said, smoke drifting from his mouth. “I’m gonna make a phone call.”
Deep in the well of the night, I sit up from a sound sleep with the certainty that something is terribly wrong. I listen intently but hear nothing amiss. Nevertheless, I throw off the covers, take my pistol from the bedside table, and walk out into the hall.
My mother is lying on the floor, staring blankly up at the ceiling.