There was no arguing this point, and after my mother sided with her, I resigned myself to the fact that sulking in my tent was not a viable option. After a shower and three cups of coffee, I found myself in Mom’s Camry, driving across the river I’d come to curse in the past few days. Annie had appropriated Caitlin’s cell phone from the box of her personal effects, and though my daughter could not break the passcode, she held the phone tightly as a kind of talisman. She also asked whether she might wear Caitlin’s engagement ring around her neck on a chain, but this request I gently refused. I could see that my mother agreed with me, and that made me feel a little better as we left the house. We can’t let Annie slip back into the kind of paralysis she experienced when my wife died.
I assumed that Henry would be buried from a white church in Ferriday, Louisiana, but as we crossed the bridge, Mom informed me that he would be buried from a black church in Clayton, a few miles away. Knowing this, I expected to come upon a white saltbox standing at the edge of an empty soybean field, with maybe fifty cars in the parking lot. Instead I saw a white saltbox that appeared to be floating on a sea of automobiles, with more lining the highway for at least a quarter mile.
Inside that box I found a crowd that probably violated the fire code by a factor of five. Like most black churches in this part of the South, this one was built from cheap pine and stands on wedge-shaped concrete blocks. If set alight, it would burn to the ground in less than twenty minutes; yet it has stood for nearly seventy years.
The demographics of this parish are simple: 70 percent black, 30 percent white, give or take a few percent, with no mixed churches or cemeteries, and the white kids in segregated private schools unless they can’t afford the tuition. Today, however, quite a few white faces salt the pews of the AME Church. They look slightly confused at finding themselves here. Yet here they have come, to honor Henry Sexton. I recognize Jerry Mitchell from the Clarion-Ledger, and one older reporter from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Beyond the smattering of journalistic luminaries, I see John Kaiser and at least half a dozen FBI agents standing near a door behind the altar. This comes as a surprise, since Kaiser must surely have more pressing business than Henry’s funeral.
Spying me as we move up the crowded aisle, Kaiser points to a few empty seats in the front rows that have been reserved. As we take our places, he walks over, leans down to me, and whispers, “How’s your daughter coping?”
At least he didn’t ask me how I’m doing. Rising again, I say, “Better than I am, so far. What are you guys doing here? Has there been a bomb threat or something?”
Kaiser shakes his head. “They found Harold Wallis early this morning, dead.”
“Where?”
“Behind a Baton Rouge crack house.”
I close my eyes, absorbing this news at the gut level. “Doesn’t matter,” I say softly. “He was just the bullet. I want the man who aimed the gun.”
Kaiser’s eyes tell me he remembers telling me the same thing about the Kennedy assassination. “You probably don’t know, but the Double Eagles were released this morning.”
This penetrates the haze of my grief. “What? After killing Sonny Thornfield?”
Kaiser gives me a cagey look. “There’s a method to my madness. I have them all under surveillance. But Snake Knox has temporarily lost his tail. Keep your eyes peeled for him, if you’re out and about.”
“Great. Where’s Forrest Knox now?”
“Holed up with his sidekick at the Valhalla hunting camp.”
“You haven’t gone after him?”
“We’re close. I’m working with the Louisiana State Police now.”
“Forrest is the state police.”
Kaiser shakes his head with confidence. “Not quite. We’re going to get him, Penn. I can’t tell you how, but it’s only a matter of time now. And not much, at that.”
“So what are you doing here?”
The FBI agent smiles and nods at Annie and my mother. “I’ll explain later. Just be cool, no matter what happens.”
Before I can ask what he means, he drifts back toward the door beyond the rail.
The hum of voices in the church is like the low rumble before a big high school graduation. People are still squeezing through the double doors at the back, and after the younger men give up their seats to women, the rear of the room swells with bodies, and the balcony creaks from the collective weight of children. I start to offer my seat to a woman standing against the wall, but Annie holds me firmly in my spot.
As we wait for the service to begin, I look to my left and right. The deeply creased faces around me have seen more toil and pain than I ever will. Life here has always been hard. In 1927 the river inundated the Louisiana Delta for miles inland, trivializing the flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina. Raccoons and poisonous snakes filled the trees, while rat-covered logs and rotting cattle floated between the hacked-through roofs serving as islands of grim survival. On the levees near the river, Red Cross camps struggled to treat refugees suffering from pellagra and other maladies. Out here, the only food or medicine arrived on small boats sent by the federal government. Yet still these people refused to leave their land. More than a few of today’s mourners look like they lived through the ’27 flood, and most of them probably remember the 1960s like they were yesterday.
The humming voices drop to nothing as two men wearing suits wheel in a coffin of dull gray metal. After they depart, a tall black man who must be at least ninety walks out to the lectern carrying an ancient Bible. He is the Reverend John Baldwin, a legend in this parish. Probably six feet four during his prime, Baldwin now has the subsident stoop of osteoporosis, but the wise eyes behind his large gold spectacles communicate dignity and compassion.
A hatted matron seated at an upright piano up front begins the service with a hymn I don’t recognize, but none of the black people in the pews need a hymnal. They sing with full-throated passion, tempered by the sadness appropriate to the occasion. After the last chord fades and dies, Reverend Baldwin looks over at another preacher who appears to be a younger version of himself. When that man nods, Reverend Baldwin begins to speak.