Between Black and White (2 page)

PART ONE

1

Pulaski, Tennessee, August 18, 2011

By 10:30 p.m. the front parlor of Kathy’s Tavern was almost deserted. The four tables were empty, and there were only two men sitting on opposite ends of the long rectangular bar.

One of the men was Clete Sartain, who had just finished his evening shift as a salesclerk at the Johnson’s Foodtown grocery store. At seventy-four years old, Clete had a snow-white beard and weighed close to three hundred pounds. Every year for the past two decades he’d played Santa Claus during the Christmas festival downtown. When he wasn’t sacking groceries or playing Kris Kringle, Clete liked to down a few Natural Lights and listen to country music, both of which were readily available at Kathy’s on Thursday nights.

In the back, a 1980s country cover band was playing “I Love a Rainy Night” by Eddie Rabbitt, and Clete tapped his foot to the music and took a long swallow of beer. The back room at Kathy’s had several tables and a stage in the rear, and based on the squeals and Bo Duke–style yee-haws from the crowd, the song choice was a popular one. Live music always drew a good turnout at Kathy’s, and from Clete’s perch at the end of the bar closest to the back he counted at least fifteen, maybe twenty folks.

Taking another sip of beer, Clete let his eyes drift toward the man seated at the other end of the bar.

With dark-brown skin and a smoothly shaven head, Bocephus Aurulius Haynes had always reminded Clete of that boxer from the ’80s, “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler. Of course, Hagler had been a middleweight, and Bocephus Haynes stood six feet four inches tall and weighed well over two hundred pounds—a heavyweight if there ever was one. And though he’d blown his knee out playing football for Bear Bryant at Alabama, Bo still carried the athletic frame of a middle linebacker. Even now, pushing fifty years old and wearing khaki suit pants with a blue shirt, tie undone, and smoking a cigar, Bo was an intimidating sight.

Seeming to sense that someone was staring at him, Bo shifted in his stool and glared toward the other end of the bar.

“Something on your mind, dog?”

Clete held up his hands and smiled, though his entire body had tensed. “Naw, Bo. Just got tired of looking at my ugly reflection in the mirror. You doing all right? How’s the law practice? Did you sue anyone today?” Clete smiled, but his heart had begun to thump harder in his chest under the heat of Bo’s gaze.

For a couple seconds Bo said nothing, ignoring the questions and just staring at Clete. Then: “You know what day today is, Clete?”

Clete blinked. “Uh, it’s Thursday I think.” When Bo didn’t answer him, Clete shot a glance at the bartender, a cute brunette named Cassie Dugan. “Right, Cassie?”

Cassie was washing a pint glass with a rag. She met Clete’s gaze and gave him a concerned look, shaking her head.

“It’s not Thursday?” Clete asked, now confused. How many beers had he drunk?

“It is Thursday,” Bo said, his voice reeking with bitterness. “Thursday,
August the eighteenth
.”
Bo paused, turning in his stool so he could face Clete. “You know what happened forty-five years ago on this very day?”

Clete’s eyes narrowed and his stomach tightened. Sweat beads began to break out on his forehead. He got it now.

“You were there, weren’t you, Clete?” Bo said, sliding off the stool and walking the fifteen feet down the bar. “You were in the Klan then, weren’t you? One of Andy Walton’s
boys
?”

Bo leaned close to Clete and blew a cloud of cigar smoke into his face. “Answer me.”

Clete pushed back his stool and threw a ten-dollar bill on the counter. “Keep the change, Cassie.”

When he tried to leave, Bo stepped in front of him.

“Bo, I . . . didn’t . . . mean to cause no trouble,” Clete said, his voice shaking.

“Did you see my daddy’s neck stretch, Clete?” Bo leaned in close, and Clete smelled the strong scent of bourbon and cigar on his breath. “Could you hear him gasping for breath?”

“That’s enough, Bo,” Cassie said from behind the bar. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave if you don’t stop.”

“I could, Clete,” Bo said, speaking through clenched teeth. “I was five years old and I saw it all . . . and I heard it all.”

Clete lowered his eyes, unable to stand the intensity of Bo’s glare anymore. “Bo, I just want to—”

“What’s going on up here?” The voice, rough and gravel-like, came from the back, and Clete had to blink his eyes to see who it was. The music had stopped, and a man was walking toward him. When he saw who it was, his bladder almost gave.

Andrew Davis Walton stepped into the front parlor flanked by his wife, Maggie, and his brother-in-law, Dr. George Curtis. Andy was a tall, angular man, much thinner now than he had been in the old days.

“Well, look what the cat drug in,” Bo said, firmly shoving Clete to the side. “You must have entered through the back,” Bo said, lowering his head so that he was almost nose to nose with Andy. “Ain’t no way you would walk in here
on this night
with me sitting at the bar.”

Andy’s voice and gaze never wavered. He looked directly at Bo as Maggie and George shot nervous glances at each other behind them. Clete wanted to just sneak on out the door, but he found that he couldn’t move his feet.

“We’ve been here a while, Bo. Today is Maggie’s birthday, and we came here to celebrate.” He paused. “She likes this kind of music.”

Bo’s eyes moved past Andy to the woman standing behind him. Maggie Curtis Walton, called “Ms. Maggie” by everyone in Pulaski, was a petite woman with an elegant sheen of white hair that fell just above her shoulders. She had crystal-blue eyes, which were focused on Bo now with what looked like pity.

“Today is kind of a
special
day for me too,” Bo said, turning his gaze back to Andy. “Remember why?”

Andy said nothing, continuing to look at Bo. He moved his right foot back a step and clenched his fists, assuming a fighter’s stance.

Bo laughed, dropped his cigar to the floor, and stomped on it so hard that Maggie Walton jumped back. “I’d like to see you try it, old man.”

“We’re gonna leave now, Bo,” Andy said. “If you don’t get out of the way, I’m going to have Cassie call the police.” He glanced at the bartender, but Bo kept his eyes fixed on Andy.

“I’ll do it too, Bo,” Cassie said, her voice high and panicky. “I ought to do it anyway. You’re scaring everyone off.”

The remaining patrons in the back were beginning to walk around them and heading for the front door, but Clete Sartain’s feet remained glued to the floor. If Bo attacked Andy, Clete figured it would take him and George both to get him off.

Ignoring Cassie, Bo leaned forward and spoke directly into Andy’s ear.
“But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.”
Bo paused, adding, “Exodus chapter twenty-one, verses twenty-one through twenty-three.” Bo turned to Clete, who had heard every word and was chilled to the bone. “You know your Old Testament, Clete?”

Clete said nothing, and Bo returned his gaze to Andy. “How about you, dog? Do you understand the message?”

Andy also remained quiet, and the bar was stone silent.

“Then let me break it down for you, twenty-first-century style,” Bo said, pausing and sticking his index finger hard into Andy’s chest. “You’re gonna bleed, motherfucker. If it’s the last thing I do on this earth, I’m going to make you pay for your sins—
eye for eye, tooth for tooth
.”

“Bo, damnit,” Cassie started, but Bo took a step back, looking them all in the eye one last time. Then he turned away and slowly walked back to his place at the bar.

For a moment the four remaining patrons just stood there, not knowing what to do next. Then, finally able to move again, Clete Sartain nodded at Andy and walked briskly out of the bar. Andy returned the gesture and took his wife by the hand. “Let’s go.”

A few seconds later Bocephus Haynes was the only customer left at Kathy’s Tavern.

Bo gazed into his empty whiskey glass, feeling adrenaline rage through his body. He hadn’t seen Andy Walton out in public in almost a year. He had heard that Andy was basically a recluse these days, occasionally dropping in on one of his businesses but mostly just holed up on his farm. The last time Bo had seen him was at a gala the previous September to raise money for Martin College’s theater program. They had shared a glare from across the auditorium, but that was it. It seemed almost surreal to see Andy at a normal place like Kathy’s.

Of all the nights to run into that bastard,
Bo thought. Shaking his head, he looked into the glass, not seeing the ice cubes beginning to melt from the heat of the Jim Beam he’d just consumed. Instead, he saw images of his father as Bo remembered him best, wearing a faded St. Louis Cardinals cap and pitching ball with Bo in the front yard of the two-bedroom shack.

The same yard where the men had come to take him. Andy’s
boys
.

Forty-five years, Bo thought. Forty-five years . . .

Bo sighed and looked up from his glass, intending to ask Cassie for another drink, but the bartender wasn’t there. He started to look around but then saw another woman’s reflection in the glass mirror above the bar. He blinked his eyes, not trusting them for a moment as the woman approached and put a hand on his shoulder.

Over the years Maggie Walton’s flowing blond hair had turned a regal white, but otherwise she seemed not to age—her eyes still crystal blue, her posture erect, and her demeanor always perfectly composed. Even now it was easy to see how she had been Ms. Tennessee runner-up in 1964.

“I think Cassie went to the restroom,” Maggie said. “Bo—”

“I’m not in the mood for a lecture, Ms. Maggie. Now go on and leave me be.” Bo’s shoulders had tensed, and he grabbed his whiskey glass, rattling the cubes.

“I don’t care what you’re in the mood for, Bo. I’m going to say what I have to say and then I’m going to leave.”

Bo said nothing, waiting. Since he had moved back to Pulaski after law school in 1985, Maggie Walton had approached him on numerous occasions, asking him to leave her family alone, and he figured this would be no different. He would be respectful and polite, but he would not grant her request. He would never leave Andy Walton alone.

“He’s dying, Bo,” Maggie said, her voice solemn.

The words hit him like a bolt of lightning. He raised his eyes and met Maggie’s gaze through the reflection in the glass.

“That was the real reason why we came here tonight—not my birthday. I wanted him to be around some of his friends. Do something normal. He . . . doesn’t have long.” She choked back a sob. “He has pancreatic cancer. Stage four. The oncologist says he’s probably got about a month, but it could be less.” She paused, and Bo saw her grit her teeth in the mirror. “I want you to let him die in peace, Bo. Do you hear me?”

Bo said nothing, still shocked by the news.

“You’ve spent every day of your life trying to make Andy’s miserable, and it’s time to let it go.” She paused and crossed her arms. When Bo remained silent, she slammed her right fist onto the bar next to him and spoke through clenched teeth. “Hasn’t this crusade cost you enough, Bo? Jasmine and the kids couldn’t take it anymore, could they?”

Bo wheeled off his stool, his body shaking with anger. “Leave me alone, Ms. Maggie.”

Maggie Walton had taken two steps back, but her eyes remained locked on Bo. “Could they?”

When Bo didn’t answer, Maggie spoke in a calm, pitying voice. “You’ve lost your whole family, Bo. Has it been worth it?” She turned and walked to the door. Grabbing the knob, she spoke without looking at him. “I want my husband to die in peace.”

2

Birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan . . .

It is the first thing anyone thinks of when Pulaski, Tennessee is mentioned. Google “Pulaski” on your computer, and the initial hits will show images of white-robed and hooded Klansmen marching on the Giles County Courthouse Square and carrying Confederate battle flags. Within the first few paragraphs of any newspaper article written on or about the town, you will see the words “birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan.” It is an inescapable and unavoidable part of Pulaski’s past.

On Christmas Eve, 1865, just eight months after General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, six Confederate veterans met at a building on West Madison Street in downtown Pulaski and formed what they called a “social club.” Diversion and amusement were intended to be the club’s aims—not vigilante justice and terrorism. “Ku Klux Klan” was chosen as the name, because it came from the Greek word
kyklos
, meaning circle of brothers.

Most white citizens of current-day Pulaski avoid talking about the Klan. However, if pressed, the standard reply is that the Ku Klux Klan of the 1950s and ’60s, which used violence and terrorism to fight the civil rights movement, was not the group envisioned by the Pulaski founding fathers.

Bo chuckled bitterly as he peered at the commemorative plaque attached to the building on West Madison. After finally being cut off by Cassie, he’d left Kathy’s Tavern and walked down First Street to his office, got a pint of Jim Beam out of the bottom drawer of his desk, and headed back into the night. He was shaken by the conversation with Ms. Maggie. Andy Walton had a month to live.
Maybe less
. . .

Bo needed to think, and his brain worked best on the move. He hadn’t really planned on walking anywhere specific, but his legs had taken him here.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions,
he thought, taking a sip of bourbon from the pint and spitting it on the plaque. Historians could spin the past however they wished. Bo had seen the Ku Klux Klan up close and personal through five-year-old eyes as they murdered his father.

And he’d spent a lifetime trying to put the men who did it in jail.

Bo had opened his law practice in September 1985, just a few months after graduating from the University of Alabama School of Law, and three weeks after his marriage to the lovely Jasmine Desiree Henderson. He’d done well in school, graduating in the top 10 percent of his class. Due to that success and his notoriety from being an Alabama football player with Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant’s 1978 and ’79 national champions, Bo had offers from numerous Birmingham, Huntsville, and Nashville law firms. Jazz had all but begged Bo to accept an offer in Huntsville, where she had grown up and where her parents still lived.

But Bo would have none of it. From the moment he was accepted to law school, he’d known where he would practice.

Home.

Reluctantly, Jazz had agreed. Pulaski was only forty-five minutes from Huntsville, and despite being the birthplace of the KKK it was also the home of Martin Methodist College, an outstanding liberal arts school, where Jazz eventually accepted a position as an art history professor.

Bo had never lied to his wife about his motives for going home. “I have to bring the men that killed my father to justice.”

Jazz said she understood and, at least in the early years, grew to embrace Pulaski.

The 1980s were a tumultuous time in Giles County, and Bo and Jazz moved back right when things were heating up. In 1985 the United States government declared that the third Monday in January would be celebrated as Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In the South the same day had historically been known as Robert E. Lee Day or Lee–Jackson Day in honor of the two famous Confederate generals.

The uproar was immediate, and Pulaski became a battleground. The Ku Klux Klan staged rallies in January of 1986, 1987, and 1988 on the Giles County Courthouse Square, and other Klan groups held additional rallies throughout the year in Pulaski. These groups of Klansmen would stand in line to kiss the commemorative plaque that Bo gazed at now, literally bowing down to it like they were visiting a shrine.

That is, they did until August 1989, when Donald Massey, the owner of the building, removed the plaque and welded it back on backwards. Bo ran his hand along the blank back side of the plaque, which was colored in green and black. Over the two decades since Massey’s grand gesture, Bo had seen tourists come and look for the plaque, ambling around downtown like zombies, unable to find it without it being pointed out to them. Bo had always lauded Massey’s reversal of the plaque as the perfect response. A figurative way for the town to turn its back on its unsavory past. Pulaski couldn’t disclaim the fact that the Ku Klux Klan breathed its first air downtown. But the town could fight back.

That sense of fight was never more evident than in October 1989, when just a couple months after Donald Massey reversed the commemorative plaque, the entire town of Pulaski shut down in response to the Ku Klux Klan’s decision to host a rally with the Aryan Nation on the courthouse square. On the day of the march, over 180 businesses, including Bo’s law office, closed in protest of the rally. Wreaths colored in orange, the international color of brotherhood, covered the town. Outside of one lone gas station that remained open, Pulaski, Tennessee had turned into a ghost town—at least for one day.

Jazz, whose parents had both marched with Dr. King in Selma, rallied behind the town’s struggle for separation from its Klan past. She and Bo became charter members of Giles County United, a group formed to counter the Klan’s rallies and which spearheaded the 1989 boycott.

When he looked back on it, Bo knew that those early days were probably the happiest of their marriage. He also knew that, while Jazz’s motives in participating in the town’s pushback against the Klan rallies of the late ’80s were pure, his own were selfish. He wanted the town to also embrace his own personal quest for justice against Andy Walton and the other members of the KKK that lynched his father on this very night forty-five years earlier.

But he could never garner any support for his cause. The excuses that each sheriff and district attorney that came into office gave were always the same. Bo had only been five years old when he
“allegedly”
saw his father lynched; Bo was the only eyewitness who had ever come forward; Bo could not see any of the men’s faces; Bo’s father’s body was found in the pond by the clearing, and it was an undisputed fact that Roosevelt Haynes couldn’t swim.

All they had to go on was the word of a five-year-old boy that he recognized Andy Walton’s voice, and that wasn’t enough.

Bo knew they were right—he knew he needed more evidence—but he also knew that the town had an ulterior motive in keeping the truth behind his father’s murder buried. Pulaski already had enough bad publicity as the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan. It didn’t need to add a Klan lynching to its résumé. Unless Bo could bring forward conclusive evidence, the town was content to let sleeping dogs lie.

Sighing, Bo lit a cigar and trudged aimlessly up Madison Street.

Ten minutes later he stood in the grass in front of his home on Flower Street. Stomping out the cigar on the curb, he took a belt of whiskey and gazed gloomily at the “For Sale” sign that had gone up thirty days earlier. He knew they were asking too much, but his pride wouldn’t let him go lower. He didn’t need the money from a sale, so . . .

. . . it sat here. Like a monument to his failure at marriage and fatherhood. Bo closed his eyes, and he immediately became dizzy, the alcohol finally working its magic. He staggered forward and almost fell, catching himself with his left hand on the grass, while his right hand brought the pint bottle to his lips again. He heard Ms. Maggie’s sharp voice play in his mind over and over again.
“Hasn’t this crusade cost you enough, Bo?”

A minute later he was ambling through the empty house. They had bought it when T. J. was two and Lila was just a baby—a response to needing more space. And from the second they walked in the door, it had been Jazz’s pride and joy. For almost two years she had directed a remodeling project, the goal of which was to preserve the historic nature of the home while doubling the square footage.

Mission accomplished,
Bo thought, as he admired the hardwood floors, high ceilings, and oversized kitchen. And though the house had always given Bo a great sense of satisfaction—who woulda thunk that a dirt-poor black kid, the son of a murdered father and a mother who abandoned him, could grow up to own one of the nicest homes in all of Giles County?—it had never given him any joy. Truth was he was hardly ever here, and even when he was his mind was always elsewhere. Bo worked his cases daylight to dark, and during the evening hours he investigated his father’s murder. Since 1985 Bo had tried forty-five cases to a jury’s verdict, winning every trial but one. Initially, he cracked his teeth on workers’ compensation and pissant criminal defense matters, but things changed in 1993 when he hit Walton Chevrolet for one point five million in an SUV rollover case. In the blink of an eye, Bo was catapulted into the world of big-time personal injury plaintiffs’ cases, and the victory was extra sweet because it came at the expense of Andy Walton’s dealership. During this same time frame, Bo figured that he had spoken with over one hundred current and former members of the Tennessee Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which, at the time of his father’s death, had over two thousand members. Bo knew if he could just get one former Klansman to roll on Andy, the floodgates would open.

But despite his dogged efforts, he had failed. In fact, the only thing his investigation had done was bring danger to his family. Bo had lost count of how many times bricks had been thrown into windows of his home or he’d woken up in the morning to see the tires on his vehicle slashed. For the most part these actions were a mere annoyance, causing frustration and tension in his marriage and family life but nothing more.

But things changed last spring when Ferriday Montaigne, a local bricklayer whom Bo had long suspected was present for his daddy’s hanging, asked Bo to visit him in the hospital. Ferriday had lung cancer and was dying. Bo had gone to the hospital, sensing that he was about to finally learn the truth, but Ferriday’s wife, on the advice of her husband’s physician, Dr. George Curtis, wouldn’t let Bo inside the room.

Frustrated, Bo had gone home that night and was greeted by a crying Jazz, who pushed a manila envelope into his chest and stormed back to their bedroom, slamming the door. Inside the package were two photographs, one of T. J. stepping out of his car at Giles County High, the other of Lila walking out the side door of their home. In each of the pictures T. J.’s and Lila’s faces were in the crosshairs of a rifle scope. There was no cover letter included with the photographs, but the message came through loud and clear.

Jazz was inconsolable. “Bo, your quest for vengeance may cost you your life. I can deal with that. I signed up for that when we married. But I will not,
can not
, let you subject our children to danger. Will you give it up? Tell me you will give it up right now.”

When Bo didn’t answer, Jazz started packing. She was gone the next day, taking the kids to her parents’ home in Huntsville and telling Bo to sell the house. And though she hadn’t officially filed the papers yet, Bo knew it was only a matter of time before he was greeted by a process server. Jazz had already accepted a professorial position at Alabama A&M in Huntsville and enrolled the kids in the Huntsville city schools.
She’s moving on . . .

Bo took a long, slow sip of Jim Beam and did one last sweep of the house, remembering T. J.’s and Lila’s rooms as they had once been. A fish tank over the dresser next to his daughter’s bed. Posters of the Pirates’ right fielder Andrew McCutchen and the Saints’ running back, Mark Ingram, on the walls in T. J.’s room. Now the walls were completely bare, save a strand of leftover Scotch tape.

Bo stopped when he made it to the kitchen. Through the double glass doors that led out to the backyard, he saw the only remaining holdover of his former life. A swing set, rusted from years of rain and use. Bo wished he could say he remembered pushing his daughter and son on that set, but he couldn’t. His only memory was staring at it through the empty kitchen as he did now. The only difference between that memory and tonight was that his wife and kids weren’t asleep in their rooms.