Between Black and White (30 page)

“No one tells me what to do,” Maggie said, shooting a glare at Helen while still pointing her gun at Bo.

“Put the gun down
now
,
Mrs. Walton, or I’ll have no choice but to—”

“You’ll have no choice but to
what
?” Maggie asked. “Watch me kill this nigger while you try to shoot me. I have the high ground here, and we both know it.”

“Even if you shoot Bo, Mrs. Walton, I’m going to kill you. The endgame is a loss for you.”

“You don’t have the balls, General. You may be a New Age, do-everything-a-man-can-do bitch, but you don’t have it in you to take me on. I
am
this town.
Me.
Maggie Curtis Walton. I’ve survived the past forty-five years and have gotten through dicier situations than this. I’m going to kill Bo. You’re going to miss or just wound me with that flare gun you’re holding. And then I’m going to kill you.” She nodded. “I can see it now. Bo came out here and tried to kill me. General Lewis came out to try to help, but he killed her, and then in self-defense I killed Bo.”

“You always have an angle, don’t you, Ms. Maggie?” Bo interjected.

“Always,”
she said, turning her eyes back to him.

“Why do you hate me so bad?” Bo asked. He knew he had to get her talking again if Helen was to have any chance of disarming her. He had to distract her. “The one thing I still don’t understand is your stake in all of this. So Andy confesses, and he goes to jail. Yeah, that’s bad and all, but is that enough for you to kill everyone? You wouldn’t have gone to jail. And you wouldn’t have lost your precious farm.” Bo paused, seeing that Maggie was gazing directly at him now.

“Why do you hate me so bad?” Bo repeated the question, his voice beginning to tremble. “Why? Andy killed my father. I had a
reason
to hate him. You got no reason to hate me. Why, Ms. Maggie?”

Bo had forgotten about Helen Lewis. He had forgotten about the gun Maggie Walton was pointing at him.
I have to know
. . .

“Roosevelt threatened my family. That is something that you
do not do
.”

“How? How could my daddy threaten you? Sitting in your big house on the hill. How could a damn field hand threaten you?”

“He threatened me with
you
,
Bocephus,” Maggie hissed. Then without hesitation she lowered the barrel of the gun and fired it.

Bo’s left kneecap exploded with pain, and he crumpled to the ground. As he did, he saw Helen Lewis fire her pistol. Helen’s shot hit Maggie in the shoulder, and she staggered backwards. The next bullet hit Maggie in the stomach, and she lowered the shotgun to her hip, her legs wobbling. She looked like she was about to fall, and Helen lowered her weapon slightly, glancing at Bo. “Are you all—?”

“No, General!” Bo screamed, but he was too late.

Maggie Walton fired the shotgun from her hip, and the district attorney general went down. Helen landed on her back and rolled over on her stomach. Then she stopped moving.

Dead,
Bo thought, cradling his destroyed knee in his arms.
Another casualty.

“I hate to say I told you so,” Maggie said, chuckling. “That bitch didn’t have it in her to take me out.”

Bo stared at her. Maggie’s white blouse was now stained red on both collarbones, but she was still alive. And she still had the gun.

Gritting his teeth against the pain and placing all of his weight on his right leg, Bo managed to stand. “How could my daddy threaten you with
me
?”
he spat.

Maggie Walton took two steps toward Bo and put the barrel of the gun against Bo’s forehead. Hate shone in her eyes as she spat the words out.
“Because he wasn’t your daddy.”

Bo blinked, and his right leg buckled. He fell to his knees and looked down at the brown sand, then back up at Maggie Walton. “What?”

“Roosevelt wasn’t your father. He married Pearl a few months
afte
r she got pregnant with you.” Maggie paused, lowering her voice to just above a whisper. “Truth is, Bo, you’ve
hated
your real daddy all your life.”

Bo raised his eyes from the sand, the truth finally dawning on him. “No,” he whispered.

“Yes,”
Maggie spat. “
Your daddy was
my husband
. Andrew Davis Walton. Imperial Wizard of the Tennessee Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Andy had an affair with your momma, and
you
were the result. You ask me why I hate you. I’ve wanted you dead from the moment you breathed air.”

Despite the unbearable pain in his kneecap, Bo felt numb all over. His arms hung limp from his sides as he stared up at Maggie Walton. “Why didn’t you have me killed as a baby then?”

“Because your daddy wouldn’t let me,”
Maggie said, her teeth clinched together in anger. “Andy owned up to what he had done, but he would not kill his own son.” Maggie laughed, but the bitterness in the sound was palpable. “How’s that for irony? You have hated Andy Walton your whole life, and he is the only reason you have lived as long as you have. The minute I put Andy out of his misery, I began to plan your death. At first I wanted the state to do it. I would have gotten so much satisfaction out of watching you put to death for the murder of your own father. But Helen couldn’t get it done, and Ray Ray stopped my hired gun from doing it, so now I guess I’m just going to have to do it myself.”

She took a step back and raised the shotgun at him.

“Why did Andy kill Da—?” Bo paused, closing his eyes. “Roosevelt?” he corrected himself. “Why did Andy kill Roosevelt?”

“Roosevelt came up to the house and said he wanted money for your upbringing. Said it wasn’t fair for the son of Andy Walton to be brought up dirt poor, and that everyone was going to know the truth if we didn’t start giving them a stipend.” She paused. “Greedy meddling nigger. I told Andy that he had to get rid of Roosevelt, and that he could think of it as a birthday present to me.” She shrugged, squinting at Bo. “Truth was Andy was glad to kill Roosevelt. What bothered him was that
you
saw. Can you believe that? He was
worried
about you.”

Bo looked up at Maggie Walton. He was beginning to get dizzy, and he blinked his eyes. He was bleeding profusely from his kneecap, and he figured he was about to pass out from blood loss.

“My momma?” Bo asked. “What happened to my momma?”

Maggie squinted at him and lowered her voice to just above a whisper. “She’s right behind you, Bocephus.”

Bo wrinkled his face in confusion and turned his head toward the pond.

“Andy was so upset when he learned that I killed his nigger whore,” Maggie continued, her voice even softer. “I stabbed her with a butcher knife. Then I took her body down to one of Andy’s lumber yards and had her corpse incinerated.” She paused. “I spread her ashes on the pond behind you.”

Bo closed his eyes. His momma hadn’t left him. She hadn’t disappeared. The monster had killed her too.

He had no further questions.

“You spent your whole life chasing revenge against Andy,” Maggie said, raising her voice.

Bo knew he was about to die. He kept his eyes closed and thought about Jazz. And T. J. and Lila. His own upbringing had been a lie, but theirs had not been. They were real.
And they’ll be better off without me
, he thought.

“And I’ve spent my whole life wanting revenge on you,” Maggie continued.

Bo forced himself to open his eyes. He turned his head and gazed up at Maggie Walton as she set the shotgun against her shoulder and squinted at Bo.

“I win,” she said, pulling the trigger.

Bo’s right shoulder erupted in pain as the buckshot entered just above the rotator cuff. As he began to sprawl backward into the pond, three more shots rang out, the last of which was deafening.

Bo closed his eyes, thinking it was only right for him to die here. In the same place where his mother’s ashes were spread. Near the tree where the only father he had ever known was lynched.

As his body began to slide into the pond, Bo lifted his head and gazed at the monster who had destroyed his life, expecting that the last thing he would see would be her smiling, satisfied face. But Maggie Walton was no longer standing.

She was lying facedown in the sand. Dead. Her chest was bleeding, and the right side of her face, the side that Bo could see, was all but gone.

Bo dug his hands into the pond’s sandy bottom, trying to stop his momentum. His eyes shot to the left, and he saw District Attorney General Helen Lewis crouched on one knee, pointing her pistol at the spot where Maggie Walton had been standing. But Helen’s eyes were not on Maggie. They were gazing at a spot behind her at the edge of the clearing. Bo followed her gaze, and his chest heaved when he saw the object of her focus.

Standing under the same tree where Roosevelt Haynes had been lynched in 1966 was an old man holding a Remington .30-06 deer rifle.

“Professor,” Bo cried.

Then everything went dark as Bo’s head dipped below the surface of the water.

EPILOGUE

Three weeks after the close of the trial of Bocephus Haynes, Rick Drake parked his Saturn on a curb next to the Maplewood Cemetery in Pulaski. Once he had turned the ignition off, Rick turned to his passenger. “We’re here, Professor.”

Thomas Jackson McMurtrie opened his eyes and rubbed them with the knuckles of his right hand. He had slept for most of the way from Tuscaloosa.

“Sure you’re up for this?” Rick asked.

Tom waved him off and opened the door. It was now early November in Pulaski, and the leaves on the trees in the cemetery were an array of yellow, brown, and orange.
Beautiful,
Tom thought as he breathed in the fresh air. The temperature was just over fifty degrees, but the sun was high in the sky, and Tom felt its warmth on the back of his neck. Gazing upward toward the cemetery, Tom was glad they had waited. Having the funeral right after the shooting would have been a circus. His friend deserved a better send-off than that. He had lived a tortured life. Tom would see to it that his burial was as smooth as it could be.

Tom and Rick walked up the hill, both holding small bouquets of flowers. As they passed the rows of headstones, Tom felt the depression that always set in when he went to pay his respects to a departed comrade. He knew it wouldn’t be too long before he was underneath one of these blocks of concrete, his bones decaying while his spirit hopefully ascended into heaven.

As they approached the tent under which the small ceremony would be held, it was hard not to think about the people he had loved who were now gone. His mother and father, whose lessons still shaped his life even now. His beautiful Julie, the one true love of his life. Coach Bryant, his teacher and mentor. And his fallen teammate, Pat Trammell, who had died too damn young from cancer. Tom wiped his eyes as he followed Rick into the tent. The mahogany casket had been placed at the far end of the tent, and a man wearing a black smock was standing beside it. Tom approached the coffin and placed the bouquet of flowers at the foot of it. Then, putting his hand on the casket, Tom closed his eyes and said a silent prayer. When he opened them, he noticed that another guest had entered the tent and was heading his way.

Helen Evangeline Lewis had a cast covering her left shoulder, which was black to match her black skirt, black blouse, and black hair. She smiled at Tom and put her own bouquet of flowers on top of those left by Tom and Rick.

“How are you?” Tom asked, kissing her cheek.

“Better,” Helen said. “I’d be dead if it wasn’t for you.”

Helen had been shot in the left shoulder, just above the heart. The shell fired by Maggie Walton had missed killing her by inches. She had fallen over on her stomach and played dead until she sensed that Maggie was about to shoot Bo. Despite her dizziness from blood loss, Helen, using the skills she had learned from her early days as a police officer, had pushed herself up and turned to where her right knee was braced on the ground and her left knee was in a squat. She brought the pistol up and fired just before Maggie Walton pulled the trigger on her shotgun. Helen’s shot caught Maggie in the neck just as Maggie fired her weapon, and the shell intended for Bo’s forehead caught him in the right shoulder.

Maggie had wheeled toward Helen, and Helen had fired again, catching the crazed woman in the chest this time. It was her last bullet, and it wouldn’t have been enough. Despite her wounds, Maggie was able to point her gun at Helen.

But she never got another shot off. Helen watched in horror as the right side of Maggie Walton’s face was ripped off her head with the force from the rifle. The sound of the blast was so loud that Helen could hear nothing for several seconds afterwards. She had turned to her right and stared at Tom, who had started to say something to her when she had passed out.

When her eyes had opened again, she was in a dark hospital room, and Tom was sitting in the corner. They had spoken for several minutes before Deputy Springfield had entered the room to question Helen on the events at the clearing.

They had not seen each other again until now. As they sat down in the plastic seats, Helen elbowed Tom softly under the rib cage. “Why didn’t you come back to see me?”

Tom smiled at her. “You needed your rest, and . . .” He paused, sighing and gesturing toward the coffin. “I had some things I had to do.”

She nodded and then gave her head a quick jerk. “Such a shame,” she said. “Such a damn shame.” Then, cocking her head at him, she leaned toward his neck and whispered, “You never told me how you figured it out.”

Tom smiled and whispered back into her ear. “When you weren’t at the station after Curtis’s suicide, I started thinking about where you could be. I remembered what we had been talking about before Ray Ray’s death, and I found the visitation log in my briefcase.” He paused. “This time I read every word.”

She smiled. “You saw?”

Tom nodded. “On August 11, 2011, Andy Walton came to visit Jack Willistone at the St. Clair Correctional Facility.
Mrs.
Andy Walton.
We had never paid any attention to the title column, only focusing on the name. Since the signature looked the same as the other times Andy had visited Jack, it didn’t even register to check the title column.” He paused, shaking his head. “But there it was. On all the prior visits, the title read ‘Mr.’ This time it read ‘Mrs.’, though the writing was a bit of a scribble, and the
s
on the end was hard to see because it ran up against the black column line.”

“But if you look hard, you can tell,” Helen offered.

“You can,” Tom said. “I’d say I can’t believe I missed it, but actually I can totally believe I missed it. The signature was spot-on. Frankly, I can’t believe that you caught it.”

Helen smiled again. “You have to remember that I have lived in this town for two decades. Andy Walton hadn’t written a personal check in years. Like a lot of wives, Mrs. Walton had learned to forge his signature on things. Hell, she probably could write like him better than he could. And as a woman of the old South, it wasn’t entirely unusual for her to call herself ‘Mrs. Andy Walton.’”

Tom shook his head. “We spoke with Jack Willistone again, and he confirmed that it was Maggie who came to see him, though he said he
couldn’t remember
what they had discussed.” He paused. “Jack had told us when we went to see him in prison that the answer we were looking for was right under our nose.”

“And he was right,” Helen said. “
Mrs.
Andy Walton visited Jack Willistone on August 11, and he gave her JimBone Wheeler’s name and contact information. We never got to the specifics, but Maggie admitted that she was the one who hired Wheeler at the clearing. And the visitation log was the tell.”

“What’s the latest with Wheeler?” Tom asked.

“We’re going to keep him here for now, and I think that’s where he’ll stay. We have him dead-to-rights guilty for the murder of Ray Ray—there are six eyewitnesses—and with Booher coming forward, we also have him for the attack on you.”

“Booher turned herself in?”

Maggie nodded. “Two days after Wheeler’s arrest, she walked into the sheriff’s office. Wheeler had given her an exit strategy if he was caught—she was supposed to go to the Caymans with a fake passport—but she didn’t want it. Said she didn’t want to run. She gave us enough information to nail Cappy Limbaugh, the hotel owner in Lawrenceburg, on a conspiracy to commit murder charge. She’ll do some time—probably two years—but she should be out on parole before she’s thirty.”

“A good deal,” Tom agreed. “What about Sheriff Petrie?”

Helen grimaced. “He’s pled guilty and is awaiting sentencing. I suspect he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison.” She started to say more, but the preacher raised up his hands and spoke in a loud authoritative voice. “Let us pray.”

Tom bowed his head.

“We come here today not to mourn a death but to celebrate a life well lived,” the minister began, his voice rising so it would reach the back of the tent. “To celebrate the life of a man who lived in this town amongst us almost all of his years on earth. A man who everyone in this tent knew and loved. We come today to celebrate the life of . . .”

Tom closed his eyes, thinking of his tortured friend.

“. . . Raymond James Pickalew.”

“. . . and we ask, dear Lord, that you wrap the spirit of Ray Ray into your loving arms so that he may know the eternal life promised through your son, Christ Jesus. Amen.”

Tom opened his eyes and glanced to his right. Helen gazed forward at the casket, also lost in thought. To his left, Rick Drake’s eyes were moist with tears. Rick had grown fond of Ray Ray during the trial and had watched him die from just two feet away. He was still having frequent nightmares. Behind them in the second row of chairs were a couple of folks from the nursing home where Ray Ray’s wife, Doris, was a resident, including Jennifer Eisel, Doris’s regular nurse. It had been decided by the nursing staff and Tom that Doris, who was in the last stages of Alzheimer’s, should not attend the funeral, as it would only serve to upset her. Also seated, but without showing her customary cleavage, was Ray Ray’s redheaded secretary, Bonnie. To Tom’s knowledge, Ray Ray had no family who weren’t deceased, and Doris’s only living relative, a cousin in Maryland, had decided not to come.

Tom started to turn back around when he noticed movement coming from the back of the tent. Two men were walking underneath. One was a lanky teenager whom Tom remembered from the trial. Next to the teen, another man held two crutches and propelled himself forward, his forehead gleaming with sweat from the effort it had taken in climbing the hill.

Without thinking, Tom rose and walked toward the man. “You OK?” Tom whispered.

Bocephus Aurulius Haynes gave a weary smile and winked at Tom. “Never better.”

“At this time,” the preacher bellowed from the front of the tent, “one of Mr. Pickalew’s friends would like to say a few words.” He paused. “Mr. Haynes . . .”

“Let me past now, Professor,” Bo said, and placed the crutches out in front of him, gracefully maneuvering the final ten feet to the front of the tent. T. J. walked with him and took the crutches from Bo, while Tom stayed glued to his spot in the back of the tent. He couldn’t believe Bo had made it. His kneecap was basically permanently ruined from the force of the shotgun blast, and the second shot had broken his collarbone. But despite his obvious pain, Bo was here.

“Thank you, Reverend,” Bo said. Tom noticed that everyone under the tent was now standing. Bo cleared his throat. “Ray Ray Pickalew was not my friend. He . . . was a flawed man and did some bad things in his life. But . . . I owe this man something, and I wasn’t able to tell him before he died, so I’ll tell him now.” Bo paused. “I spent forty-five years of my life chasing the truth behind something I saw when I was a little boy. Ray Ray, for all his warts, told that truth. If Ray Ray Pickalew hadn’t have come forward with the truth when he did, I probably would be in jail. Then if that weren’t enough, he took two bullets meant for me. But for Ray Ray Pickalew I’d either be in a jail cell for a crime I didn’t commit . . . or I’d be in this coffin.” Bo paused and looked at the casket, placing a hand on top of it. T. J. grabbed him under his other arm to keep him from falling.

“Thank you, Ray . . . Ray,” Bo said, his voice trembling with emotion. “Thank you.”

They said their good-byes at the Saturn. Bo gave Rick a bear hug and gripped him around the neck.

“You’re still my believer, kid,” Bo said.
“My believer.”

“You know it, dog,” Rick managed, wiping tears from his eyes as they both laughed.

After shaking Bo’s hand, Rick climbed into the car and turned on the ignition.

As the Saturn coughed to life, Bo, using the hood of the car as a prop, walked around the vehicle to Tom. The two men gazed at each other for several seconds before Bo leaned in and gave Tom a hug. “You saved my life, Professor,” Bo said.

“You saved mine last year,” Tom said, feeling the heat behind his eyes. “I think we’re even now.”

For a moment neither man spoke. Then Tom put his hand on Bo’s forearm. “Are you OK?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. The shoulder is still a little sore, and I’m probably going to be walking with a slight limp the rest of my life. But—”