The Chamber (40 page)

Lee was suddenly a tour guide and historian. The Yankees had burned Clanton in 1863, the bastards, and after the war, General Clanton, a Confederate hero whose family owned the county, returned, with only one leg, the other one lost somewhere on the battlefield at Shiloh, and designed the new courthouse and the streets around it. His original drawings were on the wall upstairs in the courthouse. He wanted lots of shade so he planted oaks in perfect rows around the new courthouse. He was a man of vision who could see the small town rising from the ashes and prospering, so he designed the streets in an exact square around the courthouse common. They had walked by the great man’s grave, she said, just a moment ago, and she would show it to him later.

There was a struggling mall north of town and a row
of discount supermarkets to the east, but the people of Ford County still enjoyed shopping around the square on Saturday morning, she explained as they strolled along the sidewalk next to Washington Street. Traffic was slow and the pedestrians were even slower. The buildings were old and adjoining, filled with lawyers and insurance agents, banks and cafés, hardware stores and dress shops. The sidewalk was covered with canopies, awnings, and verandas from the offices and stores. Creaky fans hung low and spun sluggishly. They stopped in front of an ancient pharmacy, and Lee removed her sunglasses. “This was a hangout,” she explained. “There was a soda fountain in the back with a jukebox and racks of comic books. You could buy an enormous cherry sundae for a nickel, and it took hours to eat it. It took even longer if the boys were here.”

Like something from a movie, Adam thought. They stopped in front of a hardware store, and for some reason examined the shovels and hoes and rakes leaning against the window. Lee looked at the battered double doors, opened and held in place by bricks, and thought of something from her childhood. But she kept it to herself.

They crossed the street, hand in hand, and passed a group of old men whittling wood and chewing tobacco around the war memorial. She nodded at a statue and informed him quietly that this was General Clanton, with both legs. The courthouse was not open for business on Saturdays. They bought colas from a machine outside and sipped them in a gazebo on the front lawn. She told the story of the most famous trial in the history of Ford County, the murder trial of Carl Lee Hailey in 1984. He was a black man who shot and killed two rednecks who’d raped his little daughter. There were marches and protests by blacks on one side and Klansmen on the other, and the National Guard actually
camped out here, around the courthouse, to keep the peace. Lee had driven down from Memphis one day to watch the spectacle. He was acquitted by an all-white jury.

Adam remembered the trial. He’d been a junior at Pepperdine, and had followed it in the papers because it was happening in the town of his birth.

When she was a child, entertainment was scarce, and trials were always well attended. Sam had brought her and Eddie here once to watch the trial of a man accused of killing a hunting dog. He was found guilty and spent a year in prison. The county was split—the city folks were against the conviction for such a lowly crime, while the country folks placed a higher value on good beagles. Sam had been particularly happy to see the man sent away.

Lee wanted to show him something. They walked around the courthouse to the rear door where two water fountains stood ten feet apart. Neither had been used in years. One had been for whites, the other for blacks. She remembered the story of Rosia Alfie Gatewood, Miss Allie as she was known, the first black person to drink from the white fountain and escape without injury. Not long after that, the water lines were disconnected.

They found a table in a crowded café known simply as The Tea Shoppe, on the west side of the square. She told stories, all of them pleasant and most of them funny, as they ate BLT’s and french fries. She kept her sunglasses on, and Adam caught her watching the people.

______

They left Clanton after lunch, and after a leisurely walk back to the cemetery. Adam drove, and Lee pointed this way and that until they were on a county highway running through small, neat farms
with cows grazing the hillsides. They passed occasional pockets of white trash—dilapidated double-wide trailers with junk cars strewn about—and they passed run-down shotgun houses still inhabited by poor blacks. But the hilly countryside was pretty, for the most part, and the day was beautiful.

She pointed again, and they turned onto a smaller, paved road that snaked its way deeper into the sticks. They finally stopped in front of an abandoned white frame house with weeds shooting from the porch and ivy swarming into the windows. It was fifty yards from the road, and the gravel drive leading to it was gullied and impassable. The front lawn was overgrown with Johnsongrass and cocklebur. The mailbox was barely visible in the ditch beside the road.

“The Cayhall estate,” she mumbled, and they sat for a long time in the car and looked at the sad little house.

“What happened to it?” Adam finally asked.

“Oh, it was a good house. Didn’t have much of a chance, though. The people were a disappointment.” She slowly removed her sunglasses and wiped her eyes. “I lived here for eighteen years, and I couldn’t wait to leave it.”

“Why is it abandoned?”

She took a deep breath, and tried to arrange the story. “I think it was paid for many years ago, but Daddy mortgaged it to pay the lawyers for his last trial. He, of course, never came home again, and at some point the bank foreclosed. There are eighty acres around it, and everything was lost. I haven’t been back here since the foreclosure. I asked Phelps to buy it, and he said no. I couldn’t blame him. I really didn’t want to own it myself. I heard later from some friends here that it was rented several times, and I guess eventually
abandoned. I didn’t know if the house was still standing.”

“What happened to the personal belongings?”

“The day before the foreclosure, the bank allowed me to go in and box up anything I wanted. I saved some things—photo albums, keepsakes, yearbooks, Bibles, some of Mother’s valuables. They’re in storage in Memphis.”

“I’d like to see them.”

“The furniture was not worth saving, not a decent piece of anything. My mother was dead, my brother had just committed suicide, and my father had just been sent to death row, and I was not in the mood to keep a lot of memorabilia. It was a horrible experience, going through that dirty little house and trying to salvage objects that might one day bring a smile. Hell, I wanted to burn everything. Almost did.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Of course I am. After I’d been here for a couple of hours, I decided to just burn the damned house and everything in it. Happens all the time, right? I found an old lantern with some kerosene in it, and I sat it on the kitchen table and talked to it as I boxed stuff up. It would’ve been easy.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know. I wish I’d had the guts to do it, but I remember worrying about the bank and the foreclosure and, well, arson is a crime, isn’t it? I remember laughing at the idea of going off to prison where I’d be with Sam. That’s why I didn’t strike a match. I was afraid I’d get in trouble and go to prison.”

The car was hot now, and Adam opened his door. “I want to look around,” he said, getting out. They picked their way down the gravel drive, stepping over gullies two feet wide. They stopped at the front porch and looked at the rotting boards.

“I’m not going in there,” she said firmly and pulled her hand away from his. Adam studied the decaying porch and decided against stepping on it. He walked along the front of the house, looking at the broken windows with vines disappearing inside. He followed the drive around the house, and Lee tagged along.

The backyard was shaded by old oaks and maples, and the ground was bare in places where the sun was kept out. It stretched for an eighth of a mile down a slight incline until it stopped at a thicket. The plot was surrounded by woods in the distance.

She took his hand again, and they walked to a tree beside a wooden shed that, for some reason, was in much better condition than the house. “This was my tree,” she said, looking up at the branches. “My own pecan tree.” Her voice had a slight quiver.

“It’s a great tree.”

“Wonderful for climbing. I’d spend hours here, sitting in those branches, swinging my feet and resting my chin on a limb. In the spring and summer, I’d climb about halfway up, and no one could see me. I had my own little world up there.”

She suddenly closed her eyes and covered her mouth with a hand. Her shoulders trembled. Adam placed his arm around her and tried to think of something to say.

“This is where it happened,” she said after a moment. She bit her lip and fought back tears. Adam said nothing.

“You asked me once about a story,” she said with clenched teeth as she wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands. “The story of Daddy killing a black man.” She nodded toward the house. Her hands shook so she stuck them in her pockets.

A minute passed as they stared at the house, neither wanting to speak. The only rear door opened onto a small, square porch with a railing around it. A delicate
breeze ruffled the leaves above them and made the only sound.

She took a deep breath, then said, “His name was Joe Lincoln, and he lived down the road there with his family.” She nodded at the remnants of a dirt trail that ran along the edge of a field then disappeared into the woods. “He had about a dozen kids.”

“Quince Lincoln?” Adam asked.

“Yeah. How’d you know about him?”

“Sam mentioned his name the other day when we were talking about Eddie. He said Quince and Eddie were good friends when they were kids.”

“He didn’t talk about Quince’s father, did he?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. Joe worked here on the farm for us, and his family lived in a shotgun house that we also owned. He was a good man with a big family, and like most poor blacks back then they just barely survived. I knew a couple of his kids, but we weren’t friends like Quince and Eddie. One day the boys were playing here in the backyard, it was summertime and we weren’t in school. They got into an argument over a small toy, a Confederate Army soldier, and Eddie accused Quince of stealing it. Typical boy stuff, you know. I think they were eight or nine years old. Daddy happened to walk by, over there, and Eddie ran to him and told how Quince had stolen the toy. Quince emphatically denied it. Both boys were really mad and on the verge of tears. Sam, typically, flew into a rage and cursed Quince, calling him all sorts of names like ‘thieving little nigger’ and ‘sorry little nigger bastard.’ Sam demanded the soldier, and Quince started crying. He kept saying he didn’t have it, and Eddie kept saying he did. Sam grabbed the boy, shook him real hard, and started slapping him on the butt. Sam was yelling and screaming and cursing, and Quince was crying and pleading.
They went around the yard a few times with Sam shaking him and hitting him. Quince finally pulled free, and ran home. Eddie ran into our house, and Daddy followed him inside. A moment later, Sam stepped through the door there, with a walking cane, which he carefully laid on the porch. He then sat on the steps and waited patiently. He smoked a cigarette and watched the dirt road. The Lincoln house was not far away, and, sure enough, within a few minutes Joe came running out of the trees there with Quince right behind him. As he got close to the house, he saw Daddy waiting on him, and he slowed to a walk. Daddy yelled over his shoulder, ‘Eddie! Come here! Watch me whip this nigger!’ ”

She began walking very slowly to the house, then stopped a few feet from the porch. “When Joe was right about here, he stopped and looked at Sam. He said something like, ‘Quince says you hit him, Mr. Sam.’ To which my father replied something like, ‘Quince is a thieving little nigger, Joe. You should teach your kids not to steal.’ They began to argue, and it was obvious there was going to be a fight. Sam suddenly jumped from the porch, and threw the first punch. They fell to the ground, right about here, and fought like cats. Joe was a few years younger and stronger, but Daddy was so mean and angry that the fight was pretty even. They struck each other in the face and cursed and kicked like a couple of animals.” She stopped the narrative and looked around the yard, then she pointed to the back door. “At some point, Eddie stepped onto the porch to watch it. Quince was standing a few feet away, yelling at his father. Sam made a dash for the porch and grabbed the walking cane, and the matter got out of hand. He beat Joe in the face and head until he fell to his knees, and he poked him in the stomach and groin until he could barely move. Joe
looked at Quince and yelled for him to run get the shotgun. Quince took off. Sam stopped the beating, and turned to Eddie. ‘Go get my shotgun,’ he said. Eddie froze, and Daddy yelled at him again. Joe was on the ground, on all fours, trying to collect himself, and just as he was about to stand, Sam beat him again and knocked him down. Eddie went inside and Sam walked to the porch. Eddie returned in a matter of seconds with a shotgun, and Daddy made him go inside. The door closed.”

Lee walked to the porch and sat on the edge of it. She buried her face in her hands, and cried for a long time. Adam stood a few feet away, staring at the ground, listening to the sobs. When she finally looked at him, her eyes were glazed, her mascara was running, her nose dripped. She wiped her face with her hands, then rubbed them on her jeans. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Finish it, please,” he said quickly.

She breathed deeply for a moment, then wiped her eyes some more. “Joe was just over there,” she said, pointing to a spot in the grass not far from Adam. “He’d made it to his feet, and he turned and saw Daddy with the gun. He glanced around in the direction of his house, but there was no sign of Quince and his gun. He turned back to Daddy, who was standing right here, on the edge of the porch. Then my dear sweet father slowly raised the gun, hesitated for a second, looked around to see if anyone was watching, and pulled the trigger. Just like that. Joe fell hard and never moved.”