Home Fires dk-6 Page 14

  “I guess.”

  “Didn’t her brother die in prison?”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me. Isaac said he saw him shoot a man in the arm over a spilled beer. You can imagine what he’d have done if he’d caught Isaac in the backseat of a car with that flower of Southern white womanhood he called his sister.”

  “Not that Isaac was any symbol of pure black manhood himself.” Regret shadowed her voice. “He had a temper and he’d punched out a white boy, broke his nose. There’s still a warrant for his arrest down at the courthouse. He had so much rage in him. He wanted to marry the girl who was carrying his baby, but her parents sent her up North. They were going to make her give the baby up for adoption.”

  “Did she?”

  “Who knows? She never came home again. I used to fantasize that they found each other up there and ran away together.”

  “Maybe they did,” I said.

  Cyl shook her head. “He would never have stayed away all these years without calling or writing. No, he and Snake went to Boston and I figure he either got into another fight or was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I tried to trace him when I got out of law school, but after twenty years? And there was so much violence in Boston that summer. I used to think—”

  “Hey now!” said Ellis Glover in his heartiest voice. “What’s the two prettiest ladies at this barbecue doing sitting over here with such serious faces? I’ve been challenged to a game of horseshoes and I need a partner.”

  “Not me,” Cyl said and quickly stood up. “Last time I tried, I broke three fingernails. Besides, I want to talk to Mr. Ligon before he leaves.”

  I could cheerfully have used Ellis’s neck as a horseshoe stake at that moment for interrupting the first real conversation I’d ever had with Cyl. Would she retreat behind her armor again, embarrassed that she’d opened up to me? Pretend it never happened?

  I didn’t get a chance to find out that day. By the time Ellis and I beat two pairs of challengers and were then sat down by a third, Cyl had rounded Stan up and left.

  And yeah, I broke a thumbnail.

  18

  Only God is in a position to look down on anyone.

  —Westwood United Methodist

  On Sunday, the News and Observer carried an in-depth report on the three burned churches: their histories, their significance in the black community, and how their congregations planned to cope with the loss.

  Overall, the tone was upbeat. The Reverend Ralph Freeman explained that while the circumstances of Balm of Gilead’s destruction were deplorable and much more precipitous than expected, the onetime service station was never slated to be saved once they vacated. “It has more than fulfilled its purpose and we assumed that Shop-Mark would simply bulldoze it when they began clearing the lot to build. In the meantime, we have an old-fashioned revival tent set up on our new site and we’d like to invite everyone reading this to put down their newspapers and come join us this morning to praise God for His goodness and everlasting mercy.”

  The N&O thoughtfully included directions to Balm of Gilead’s new location and a schedule of services. It also re-capped how Leon Starling had once owned the old store and the land it sat on and how his grandson Charles was now charged with arson.

  Like Balm of Gilead, Mount Olive was also finding mixed blessings in the fire. Previously, Reverend Anthony Ligon had been an enthusiastic, if diplomatic, advocate for expansion and he was almost ebullient when interviewed. He did his share of obligatory tongue-clicking, especially when it came to the tragic death of Arthur Hunt, whom they had buried Friday in a graveside ceremony, but his satisfaction came through more clearly than he perhaps intended.

  “Our insurance policy covers replacement costs, not a set monetary value, so our fellowship hall with its Sunday School rooms will be re-sited. This gives us enough space to extend our sanctuary straight back and to double our seating capacity without damaging the basic integrity of the original sanctuary any more than the fire has already destroyed. From the outside it will look very much as it looked before the fire, except that the whole building will be somewhat longer.”

  The Historical Society had pledged to help find artisans to duplicate the dentil moldings and etched-glass windows. “We appreciate that this is a functioning church with modern concerns,” said their spokeswoman, “but it is also such a historically important structure that we naturally want to do everything in our power to help preserve its architectural features. The slave gallery has been unsafe to use these last few years. We hope to raise funds to replace the old wooden supports with steel reinforcements.”

  Mr. Ligon confessed himself overwhelmed by the generosity of so many. “We’ve already been blessed with enough donations that we’re hoping to begin clearing away the rubble this week. In the meantime, we’re grateful to the County Commissioners and to the County Board of Education for giving us the use of West Colleton High’s gymnasium on Sunday mornings. With God’s help, we’ll be back in our restored sanctuary before school starts again.”

  By contrast, the Reverend Byantha Williams sounded like the ill-tempered fairy godmother who crashed Sleeping Beauty’s christening. While Burning Heart of God Holiness Tabernacle would be getting a pro rata share of any unrestricted donations designated to help “the three burned churches,” it was not getting much sympathetic charity from the immediate neighborhood.

  Sister Williams had neither the warm humanitarianism of a Ralph Freeman nor the political tact of an Anthony Ligon. Over the years, she had taken too much delight in pointing out the motes in the eyes of her fellow Christians—their sins of the flesh and their sins of the spirit. Their reluctance to come to her aid now only confirmed her sour view of them.

  “You get back what you give,” says Maidie.

  There was no insurance on either the church or her small house trailer and the county had already warned her that she could not put another trailer back on the premises without a modern septic system. The old outhouse’s proximity to the nearby branch was unacceptable, they said.

  “God tempers the wind to His shorn sheep,” she responded defiantly. “He will not lay on us burdens too heavy to bear. The sinner may not want to hear His message, but we will deliver it even louder. God has called me to call sinners to His holy cross and while there is breath in my body, I will not deny Him though the whole world denies me thrice before the cock crows three times.”

  The reporter seemed a little confused at this point, but put quotation marks around everything as if to deny his part in the confusion.

  He reported that Burning Heart of God had been given the temporary use of an empty storefront in Cotton Grove (we later learned that Grace King Avery had persuaded a former student to make the offer) and that Sister Williams and her cats were living in the rooms behind it for the time being.

  The article concluded by predicting that all three churches would rise, phoenix-like, from their ashes.

  “Humph,” said Maidie.

  “Two out of three wouldn’t be bad,” said Daddy.

  That evening, A.K. stopped by in his pickup on the way home after serving the second of his three weekends and asked if I wanted to go out for a pizza if I wasn’t doing anything.

  “Sure,” I said, putting aside the case files that needed my attention and wondering what was up.

  We drove out to a pizza place near the interchange.

  “Everything’s cool as far as jail’s concerned, isn’t it?” I asked as we pulled into the parking lot.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “No problem. It’s not how I’d want to spend my life, but I can take one more weekend. What’s going to happen with Charles and Raymond, though? They’re in without bail. Will this count as their jail time?”

  I assured him that if they were found guilty, they’d not be worrying about a few weekends in jail. “Assuming they don’t get the death penalty, they’ll be in a federal pen down in Atlanta and that’s no stroll on the beach.”

  “Death penalty? You shitting me?”<
br />
  I quickly briefed him on current laws and A.K. looked shaken as he held the door open for me.

  The restaurant interior smelled of olive oil and hot yeasty dough. Even though he’d invited me, I had no illusions as to who’d be paying. We slid into a booth with padded red leather benches. He opted for the buffet; I ordered a salad (no dressing) and a slice with sausage and anchovies.

  “The thing is,” he said when he’d returned from the buffet stand loaded down with slices of pepperoni and green pepper pizza, “I don’t think they did it.”

  “Charles Starling made threats,” I reminded him, “and they don’t have alibis.”

  “Aw, Charles.” He gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “All front, no sides. He and Raymond can both be jerks—”

  “So why do you hang with them?” I asked.

  “Raymond helped us barn tobacco last summer. He’s okay. After Cathy and I broke up, he and Charles were tight and they weren’t seeing anybody either.”

  “And Charles can pass for twenty-one at convenience stores?”

  He gave a shamefaced nod. “Least he can at places where they don’t look at your ID too close.”

  “Closely,” I said automatically.

  “Closely,” he echoed, accustomed to his mother’s corrections.

  “Anyhow, the point is, Raymond didn’t burn down any churches and neither did Charles. I got a chance to talk to Raymond today and he swore they didn’t do it. They were at Charles’s trailer when Mount Olive went up. From eight-thirty on.”

  “Unfortunately, no one saw them.” I bit into my pizza slice. The crust was just as I liked it, and the anchovies went nicely with the mozzarella and tomato sauce.

  “How can you eat them salty things?” A.K. grimaced at my enjoyment. “Anyhow somebody did see them. Somebody came over to borrow a backpack from Charles around nine o’clock.”

  “Why didn’t this somebody come forward?”

  “ ’Cause he borrowed the backpack to go to some bass fishing tournament up in Massachusetts.”

  “Why didn’t they speak up about it? Or tell Reid? He’s Raymond’s attorney.”

  “Thing is, Charles knows the guy’s name is Jerry and his girlfriend’s Bobbie Jean and he lives four trailers over, but he doesn’t know either of their last names or where in Massachusetts they was going fishing.” A.K. twirled a string of melted mozzarella. “Were going fishing. And Charles didn’t want to say anything till Jerry got back because Bobbie Jean was going with him.”

  “And?”

  “And, well, it seems that Bobbie Jean’s husband said he’d kill Jerry if he caught him messing around her again and Bobbie Jean sort of told her husband she was going to see her sister in Massachusetts and he doesn’t know Jerry was going, too.”

  He popped the cheese in his mouth and looked around to see if the waiters had set out another pizza on the hot bar. This early in the evening, there weren’t enough customers to merit a steady stream of fresh choices and he made do with two lukewarm slices of sausage and mushrooms.

  “So, anyhow, Raymond’s getting a little worried that what if Jerry comes back and Bobbie Jean’s husband gets to him before he can come down to the police station and say they were there. So Raymond and me, we thought maybe you could tell Dwight and he could put out an APB or something and get to Jerry first.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not going to happen, honey. In the first place, Dwight doesn’t have jurisdiction here. It’s a federal offense, not state. In the second place, it’s Raymond’s responsibility to tell Reid and then Reid will probably try to contact this Jerry, leave word at the trailer park for when he comes back.”

  “They didn’t know whether the tournament was this weekend or next.”

  When I shook my head in amusement, A.K. said huffily, “Well, jeez, Deb’rah. It’s not like they knew they were going to need an alibi. Nobody thinks like that. Can you prove where you were between nine-thirty and ten o’clock last Sunday night?”

  “As a matter of fact, I can,” I said, remembering the long phone call Kidd and I had shared about then, he in New Bern, me lying across the bed with a report on DNA testing.

  A.K. cut his eyes at me. “You gonna marry that game warden guy?”

  I smiled. “I’ll talk to Reid tomorrow, okay?”

  “Yeah, but you still didn’t answer my question.”

  “No comment,” I said and signalled for our check.

  19

  One rowing the boat

  Has no time to rock it

  —St. Catherine’s R.C. Church

  Monday morning’s court was pretty heavy. Lots of misdemeanor possessions, assaults, a couple of B&E’s, and a handful of check-bouncers. Cyl DeGraffenried prosecuted and she was as brisk and businesslike as ever as we moved through the calendar.

  First up was a middle-aged black woman charged with writing two worthless checks to Denby’s, a local department store. She waived counsel and pleaded guilty with explanation.

  “See, what happened was I added up wrong and thought I had more than I did. And right after that, my sister’s little boy had to have glasses and I loaned her the money I was going to use to pay the store back. She give me a check last Friday a week ago and I put it in the bank and wrote Denby’s a new check, but my sister’s check won’t no good either. She was supposed to get me the cash money by first thing this morning, but her boyfriend’s car broke down and he took her car to go to work, so she didn’t have no way to come and—”

  “Where does your sister live?” I asked.

  “Near North Hills in Raleigh.”

  “And she has the full—” I checked the figures on the paper before me—“the full three hundred and five you owe Denby’s?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Plus eighty dollars court costs?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I told her it was going to cost her four hundred for all my aggravation and she says she’s got the money sitting there soon as she can get it to me.”

  “You have a car?”

  She nodded.

  “How long will it take you to drive to North Hills and back?”

  “Two hours?” she hazarded.

  “Let’s make it three,” I said. “I don’t want you speeding. It’s nine-fifteen now. If you’re back here with the money by twelve-thirty, we can dispose of this today.”

  She hurried out, trailed by the accounts manager from Denby’s.

  Cyl DeGraffenried called her next case, Dwayne McDaniels, 23, black. Dreadlocks and baggy pants. He pleaded guilty to driving while impaired and possession of a half-ounce of marijuana.

  “What’s the state asking, Ms. DeGraffenried?” I asked.

  To my bemusement, she said, “Sixty days, suspended on condition he spend twenty-four hours in jail, pay a hundred-dollar fine and get the required alcohol and drug assessment.”

  “Let’s give him the whole weekend to think it over,” I said.

  McDaniels was followed by Joseph Wayne Beasley, 18, also black, who pleaded guilty of driving while his license was revoked. Looking at his record, I would normally have given him a suspended sentence, maybe two weekends in jail and a five-hundred-dollar fine.

  Cyl asked for the suspended sentence, one weekend in jail and a three-hundred-dollar fine and tried not to smirk when I held to my original assessment of appropriate retribution.

  Robert Scott Grice, 24, white, pleaded guilty to assault on his girlfriend. To his attorney’s visible dismay Cyl suggested he be sentenced to one hundred and fifty days in jail and not go near his girlfriend’s house or place of work.

  I gave him seventy-five with the same conditions.

  It was like that all morning, Cyl asking lower penalties for black youths and higher for whites so that I had to toughen the one and reduce the other to reach a sense of fairness.

  Just before noon, I motioned her up to the bench.

  “Your Honor?” she said sweetly.

  “Forget it, Ms. DA,” I said just as sweetly. “Today does not c
ount toward our bet.”

  She smiled. “So, when you want to do dinner?”

  By noon, the ranks had thinned considerably and the courtroom held less than a third it had this morning.

  The woman who bounced checks at Denby’s had rushed through the doors a few minutes earlier, a thin glaze of perspiration on her dark face. She was now seated on the front bench right behind the bar. A crumpled white envelope was clutched in her hands and virtue shone in her eyes.

  I motioned for her to come forward. “Your sister didn’t let you down, did she?”

  “No, ma’am, Your Honor. Here it is, every cent.”

  “I hope you didn’t break the sound barrier, getting to North Hills and back,” I said.

  She chuckled and went over to my clerk to collect the necessary papers and then out to pay the cashier what she owed.

  The Denby’s manager looked pleased as he drew a line through her name on his notepad. There were still a bunch of names left though, more than would be appearing before me that day.

  I recessed till one-thirty.

  “All rise,” said the bailiff.

  The law firm of Lee and Stephenson, formerly known as Lee, Stephenson and Knott before I became a judge, is still located in a charming story-and-a-half white clapboard house half a block from the courthouse.

  Robert Claudius Lee, John Claude’s grandfather, was born there shortly after the Civil War, and so was Robert’s brother, who grew up to be my mother’s mother’s father.

  If you’re Southern, you’ve already worked it out that John Claude’s my second cousin, once removed. If you’re not Southern, you probably aren’t interested in hearing that Reid is a cousin through my mother’s paternal side, but no kin at all to John Claude.

  Enough to know that John Claude’s father and Reid’s grandfather (my great-grandfather Stephenson) started the firm in this very house sometime in the twenties and that Lees and Stephensons have been partners there ever since.

  Although both cousins have argued cases before me many times since I came to the bench, no one has yet accused me of favoring them. If anything, Reid’s accused me of just the opposite. John Claude doesn’t accuse. If he thinks one of his cases is going to be a hairsplitter, he manages to get it heard by somebody else, not me.