Lincoln is staring at the sheriff, but I can’t tell whether he’s been expecting Byrd or not.
“Mayor Cage,” Billy says, “we don’t like people threatening witnesses in this county. And this looks to me like harassment of a witness. This man here’s gonna help put your father in jail for murder, which means you need to steer clear of him till the trial.”
“I haven’t threatened anybody. This man was parked outside my house an hour ago, and when I pulled up, he took off like he was leaving the scene of a crime.”
Byrd grunts skeptically, then looks down at Lincoln. “That right, Mr. Turner?”
“The mayor’s mistaken, Sheriff. I was just sitting here having an early supper. He walked in, sat down, and started asking me where his father was. To tell the truth, I think he’s confused.”
“I imagine he is,” Billy says. “Now that his daddy’s jumped bail. I call that damned peculiar behavior for a model citizen. Hell, the Louisiana State Police say Dr. Cage killed a trooper over there. I don’t figure he’s got long before somebody puts a bullet in him.”
Lincoln’s mouth drops open. This is clearly new information to him.
“Yeah,” Billy goes on, “at this rate, your mama’s case might not even get to trial. Dr. Cage is liable to be bagged and tagged by sundown. But that’s no reason to let the mayor abuse his position.”
Sheriff Byrd looks toward the end of the bar, where my waitress stands whispering to the big bartender. “Hey, hon! Fix me a coupla them cat-head biscuits to go. Put some gravy in there with ’em.”
If Lincoln or the club management didn’t summon Sheriff Byrd here, then Billy himself—or one of his minions—was already nearby when I arrived, keeping an eye on Lincoln. The sheriff might have several reasons for doing that, but at this moment, in my mind, one overrides the rest.
“I just realized what you’re doing here, Billy. You think Dad might try to contact Lincoln, or even hurt him. Lincoln is nothing but a goat tied to a tree. You want to put a bullet in my father before some Louisiana state trooper beats you to it. And all because Dad knows what a rotten son of a bitch you really are.”
Billy’s hand drops to the pistol at his side.
“You’re quick to reach for that gun, aren’t you? That temper’s going to get you in trouble someday. Soon, maybe.”
“Aren’t you late for a meeting?” Byrd asks, his eyes burning. “That Joint Governance Committee you started gets going in ten minutes, and you’re twenty miles from the courthouse.”
He’s right, I realize, looking at my watch. “I do have a meeting,” I tell Lincoln, getting to my feet.
Byrd looks down at Turner. “Did you know the mayor wants to rebuild the old slave market for tourists to gawk at? ‘Cultural tourism,’ he calls it. What you think about that? As an Afro-American? Would you pay money to come look at the block they sold your ancestors on?”
Lincoln wipes his mouth with a napkin and gets up from the table. He towers six inches above Billy Byrd, and he doesn’t make any effort to give the sheriff the space he’s accustomed to.
“You in the wrong jook, Sheriff,” he says. “We settle our own business up in here. Ain’t no place for the law.”
Byrd seems stunned by “his” witness’s behavior. Leaving his hand on his pistol grip, he takes a step back and says, “I’m the high sheriff of this county, boy. I go any damn place I please.”
“Then go,” Lincoln says. “Before somebody decides to disabuse you of your notions.”
Sheriff Byrd glances over his shoulder. The big bartender stares back at him, both hands invisible behind the bar. The waitress and cook are watching from the kitchen curtain, and there’s a cleaver in the cook’s hand.
“All right, now!” Billy says loudly, backing away from our table. “Nobody do nothin’ stupid!”
“That sounds like good advice,” Lincoln says.
Billy finally looks to me for help—the only other white man in the room. But I simply turn up my palms.
“Where’s my damn biscuits?” he calls, trying to assert the old hierarchy.
The bandanna-clad waitress slides between two tables with a small brown sack in her hand. As Billy reaches out with his free hand, she drops the sack on the floor at his feet.
“Sorry ’bout that,” she says, making no effort to pick it up.
“You people need a little reeducation,” Billy mutters. “Oh, yeah.”
The sheriff looks like he’s going to say something else, but instead he shakes his head and marches out to the parking lot, leaving his biscuits on the floor.
“I thought you were working with him,” I say to Lincoln.
“I’m not working with anybody, Mayor. I’m here for justice. I’ll use a cracker like Byrd if I have no choice, but I don’t have to like it.”
“What about Shad Johnson?”
Lincoln shrugs. “Same for that Oreo. But he’s the man in the DA’s office.”
“What were you doing outside my house this afternoon?”
“Looking at the life I might have lived, if things had been different.” He gazes down into my eyes with emotion that I can’t begin to read. “Think about what I’ve told you today. Think about what the Bible says: ‘I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the father on the sons unto the third and fourth generation.’”
As he quotes the Bible, I sense a malevolent urge within him, something darker and more primitive than anything he’s voiced today.
“Lincoln … you wish history was something less terrible than it was for your mother. I wish the same thing. But you shouldn’t try to punish my father for pain inflicted by someone else. My father loved your mother. He proved that in the last month of her life. Why can’t you leave it at that?”
Lincoln lays a twenty-dollar bill on the table and prepares to go.
“You talk about sin like you’ve never committed any yourself,” I observe.