Kindred Spirits (10 page)

“So you don’t think he
did it?” I say.

“Most of what I know
about the case I learned years after it happened. But no, I don’t think the
case against him was that strong.” He looks at Adam, then at me. “Say...you two
are trying to find out all you can about this murder, aren’t you? You’re trying
to figure out who really did it.”

I look down, embarrassed
for some reason. “Yes, sir. But we’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anybody.”

“My lips are sealed,” he
says, chuckling. “I tell you what. I don’t think you kids are gonna get
anywhere with this, but I’ll make you a deal here and now. If you do find out
something big, come and tell me, and I promise you a front-page story in
The
Wilder Herald
.”

“Thank you, sir.” A
front-page newspaper story clearing Charlie T would probably be enough to
satisfy the Jameson sisters and to give Charlie Thomas, Jr. some satisfaction,
too. But we haven’t proved a thing yet, and from the sound of his chuckling,
Roy Silcox doesn’t think we ever will.

As soon as we’re out of
the office, Adam says, “So unless Mr. Silcox is lying, his brother can’t be the
killer.”

“And I don’t think Mr.
Silcox is lying,” I say. “Having the Sight makes you pretty good at telling
whether somebody’s lying or not. That’s why I always tell the truth to Mom and
Granny. There’s no point in lying to somebody who can look right inside your
head.”

Walking
back toward town, Adam pauses in front of the Kwik-E Mart. “Hey,” he says,
“there’s a pay phone here. Why don’t we call the other guys who were listed in
the phone book?”

I reach inside my skirt
pocket. Empty, as usual. “You got any change?”

“Sure,” he grins, “I’m a
doctor’s kid.  I’m rich.”

The phone book which is
attached to the pay phone has been rained on so often it’s swollen and its
pages are stuck together. Luckily, Wilder is so small that the listings for
Bradley and Buchanan are on the same page, which is smeary but still readable.
Remembering that Granny described Bill Bradley as a cranky old codger, I decide
to dial Harold Buchanan first. Maybe talking to him will be easier.

I feed the money into the
phone and punch the numbers, getting ready to make my little speech about how
my friend and I are working on a project on the history of Wilder. But when the
dial tone stops, what I hear is a robotic-sounding recording that says, “I’m
sorry. You have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in
use.”

“Huh,” I say, hanging up.
“His number’s been disconnected.”

“Maybe he didn’t pay his
phone bill,” Adam says.

“Maybe, but from what
Granny said he sounds like the bill-paying type.  Maybe he moved.”

“Could be,” Adam says.
“Why don’t you try Bill Bradley?”

I sigh. “You sure you
don’t want to try him?”

“Hey,
I provide the quarters. You make the phone calls.”

“All right.”

After three rings a gruff voice says,
“Yeah?”

“Um...hello.  May I speak to Bill
Bradley, please?”

“This is Bill Bradley.
Who are you?”

Granny wasn’t kidding
about him being crotchety. “My name is Miranda Jasper. I’m in sixth grade at
Wilder School. My friend Adam and I are working on a project about the history
of Wilder, and we thought that since you’ve lived here all your life, you might
be a good person to interview.”

“You’re the witch woman’s
granddaughter, ain’t you?”

I swallow hard to fight
the temptation to hang up on him. “My grandmother is Irene Chandler, if that’s
who you mean.”

“Yeah, that’s her. Well,
I ain’t skeered of her nor you neither.”

“And you shouldn’t be
scared of us, sir. We’re nice people.”

“Hmf.” He’s so quiet for
a minute I wonder if he’s still there, then he says, “So if I was to tell you
what I think about Wilder, you’d write it down and use it in your school
project?”

“Yes, sir. That’s right.”

“You know where I live at?”

“Across the street from
the Piggly Wiggly, right?”

“That’s right. Well, you
and your little friend come on over here after you get out of school tomorrow,
and I’ll tell you what I think of Wilder.”

“Thank you, Mr. Bradley.
We’ll see you then.”

“Well,” I say, hanging up
the phone. “It looks like you’re going to have to tell your mom you’re coming
over to my house tomorrow afternoon.”

“Why’s
that?”

“Because we’re going to
be paying a visit to Bill Bradley.”

Most people in town call
the Piggly Wiggly grocery store the Pig. This means it’s not weird to hear
adults say things like, “We’re about out of milk, so I reckon I’d better go to
the Pig.” The first time Granny heard somebody saying that, she said, “But
pig’s milk ain’t fit to drink. Why don’t you let me sell you some goat’s milk?”

Right now we’re standing
in the Pig’s parking lot, looking across the street at Bill Bradley’s place.
It’s a small, white, aluminum-sided house with lots of tacky lawn ornaments in
its postage-stamp-sized front yard. Green painted concrete frogs sit on a white
concrete bench. A little Dutch boy and girl, also concrete, are frozen in a
kiss, and a concrete lawn jockey with a black-painted face stands by the front
porch holding a lantern.

“If that lawn jockey’s
any sign,” Adam says, “my guess is that Bill Bradley wasn’t that broken up
about what happened to Charlie T.”

“That’d
be my guess, too,” I say. “So do you have your nerve up to actually go talk to
this guy?”

“Sure,” Adam says, “as
long as you’re the one who really does the talking.”

We cross the street and walk
past all the concrete characters to get to Bill Bradley’s front door. When I
knock, a deep voice growls, “Who is it?”

“Miranda Jasper,” I yell
through the door. “We talked on the phone yesterday.”

“Come in,” the voice
yells back.

In the living room, Bill
Bradley is sitting in a green recliner. What little gray hair he has is
uncombed, and his belly strains against a tight, dingy undershirt which gaps
over his faded pajama bottoms. A game show is on the TV, which is turned up so
loud I’m surprised he could hear us knocking.

“Sit down,” he says, not
looking away from the screen. We take a seat on an ugly brown couch which has a
picture of a blond-haired Jesus hanging over it. Mr. Bradley picks up the
remote control and turns the TV down but not off. “So,” he says, “what was it
you’uns was wanting me to tell you about Wilder?”

“Well...” I start, “I
guess we’d like to hear what it was like living in Wilder when you were a
kid...and a teenager.”

“Back then,” Mr. Bradley
says, scratching his belly underneath his shirt, “Wilder was a right nice place
to live. Of course, the Depression was on, so people didn’t have no money, but
times was still better than now ‘cause people knew how to act.”

“How to act?” I say.

“That’s right. Young
folks minded their parents. There wasn’t no rap music or dope or people getting
above themselves. People knew what their place was, and they stayed in it.”

I
glance at Adam, who looks like he’s going to make a run for it. “So,” I say to
Mr. Bradley, “would you say that Wilder was safer back then?”

“Sure it was safer,” Mr.
Bradley says. “You could leave your front door open back then.”

“But what about that
murder?” Adam says. “Those two ladies that got killed in nineteen thirty-four?”
I notice that Adam is developing a pattern during our interviews. He sits with
his mouth shut while I get the person talking, then finds his voice when he
gets impatient to talk about the murder.

“Oh, you wanna hear about
that, do you?” Mr. Bradley flips off the tv and for the first time since we’ve
been there, really looks at us. “Now that was one time when somebody did forget
what his place was,” he says. “But he learned it again real quick.”

“Do you mean Charlie
Thomas?” I ask.

“If that was the name of
the boy that killed the Jameson sisters, then that’s who I mean. I don’t
recollect his name myself.”

Hate bubbles and steams
from Mr. Bradley like some evil potion boiling in a cauldron. As I look in his
head I see a whole catalog of the people he hates: black people, Hispanics,
Catholics, Democrats, and a anybody else who’s not just like him. His mind is
not a fun place to be, and I get out of there as fast as I can. “So,” I say,
“you think Charlie T did it.”

“Of course he did it!”
Bill Bradley yells. “He shot them two ladies like they wasn’t better than a
couple of squirrels. And how come? Because he thought he was entitled to a
handout from them that he wasn’t getting.”

“Where were you when the
murder happened?” Adam asks. His voice is shaking, and his hands are balled
into fists.

“Me?”
To my surprise, Mr. Bradley smiles. “I was sittin on the porch swing of the old
homeplace, with my arm around the girl who was gonna be my wife. That’s her
picture setting there on top of the TV. She died ten years ago this April.”

I look at the picture of
the smiling, grandmotherly woman and try to figure out how a man like Bill
Bradley can be so full of hate and still have room for love. “She was pretty,”
I say.

“Prettiest girl I ever
seen,” Mr. Bradley says. “Anyhow, I was sitting on the porch swing with Betty
when one of Daddy’s friends came driving up in his car. He hollered for Daddy,
and when Daddy come out the feller told him that the colored boy who delivered
the paper had just killed both of the Jameson sisters. Well, Daddy was mad
enough to spit nails. He was yelling about how no respectable white woman was
safe in her own house these days. And that evening Daddy got his gun and said
that him and some of the boys was going to the other side of town to teach them
a lesson. I begged to go, too, but Daddy said I had to stay home to protect my
mama and my sister. I sure was sorry to miss all that excitement, though.”

In my mind I see what
Mr.Bradley thinks of as excitement: the Klan, which Mr. Bradley’s father the
city councilman was a member of, burning crosses, firing shots, marching men
and women and children onto freight cars and out of town. And all that time,
young Bill Bradley sitting on the porch, just like he had been when the Jameson
sisters were killed. I can see him there on the porch swing with his
brown-haired girlfriend, and I know that no matter how terrible a person he is,
he isn’t the killer.

“Of
course, I don’t want you to think I’m prejudiced,” Mr. Bradley is saying when I
come back to the here and now. Mr. Bradley nods toward Adam. “Like I couldn’t
help but notice that you’re a person of the Oriental persuasion. And I don’t
have no problem with you people. Now, sure, I killed a few of your kind in the
war, but that was different; they wasn’t Americans. When you people come over
here and decide to be Americans, though, there ain’t nobody that works harder
than you do. They’s a lot of real Americans that could learn a thing or two
from your people.”

Adam’s mouth wouldn’t be
hanging open any wider if an elephant had just walked into the room. Because
I’m not sure if he should say whatever’s going to come out of his mouth when he
can talk again, I say, “Well, Mr. Bradley, thank you for your time. We’d better
be getting home now.”

I grab Adam’s arm and
pull him toward the door.

“Come back any time you
want to, young’uns,” Mr. Bradley says. “This world’d be a better place if more
people your age would take the time to listen to old people.”

“Not to old people like
him!” Adam spits as soon as we’re out the door. “I think he is the very worst
person I’ve ever met in my life.”

“Hey, now,” I say,
nudging Adam. “He doesn’t have nothin’ against you people.”

Adam doesn’t even crack a smile.

“I know...he is pretty
terrible,” I say as we cross the street to the Pig.

“So,” Adam says, “should
we go ahead and talk to the police, do you think?”

“Why would we do that?”

Adam looks at me like I’m
the dumbest person on earth. “To tell them that Bill Bradley killed the Jameson
sisters and blamed it on Charlie T.”

I
stop walking and turn to face him. “But he didn’t do it.”

“What do you mean he
didn’t do it?” Adam is yelling. This is the first time he’s ever acted mad at
me. “You heard him. You heard the way he talked about black people. Do you
think he wouldn’t have hated Charlie T enough to frame him for the murder?”

“Sure, I think he
would’ve hated Charlie T enough.” I’m speaking softly, trying to calm Adam
down. “But what reason would he have had for killing a couple of’respectable
white ladies’ like Helen and Mildred Jameson? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Well,” Adam says, like
he’s stalling for time. “He probably had his reasons. We just need to find out
what those reasons were.”

Adam starts walking
again, but I grab his arm and make him look at me. “Listen,” I say. “Bill
Bradley is probably pretty high on the list of biggest jerks of all time, but
just because he’s a jerk, that doesn’t make him a murderer. I have the Sight,
Adam. I can tell when people are lying, and when Mr. Bradley said he was on the
porch swing when the murders happened, he was telling the truth.”

“But you said your sight
wasn’t as strong as your mom’s and granny’s. Maybe it’s not strong enough for
you to see that Bill Bradley is lying.”

“You could be right,” I
say, even though I’m sure Mr. Bradley is telling the truth. “But don’t you
remember what Abigail said? She said when I met the killer I would know... I
would feel it.

When I met Bill Bradley I
didn’t feel anything...except for the feeling that I didn’t like him much.”

We’re walking again,
toward downtown. When we pass the dollar store, Adam says, “So if it’s not Bill
Bradley and it’s not Eugene Silcox, that just leaves us with two guys we don’t
know anything about’that Floyd guy, who could be anywhere if he’s even still
alive, and Harold Buchanan, whose phone has been disconnected.”