Penumbra (10 page)

F
rom the hospital window, Jade could see the lights of half a dozen houses along Jasmine Street. As a little girl, she’d been in three of the houses, where Ruth picked up ironing she did late at night to make a little extra money. At one house, Eula Lee Walden had given Ruth five dresses for Jade. Mrs. Walden’s daughter, Beth Ann, had outgrown the clothes. One was a beautiful yellow-and-white-checkered sundress with butterflies embroidered all over it, and a matching yellow sweater with a butterfly on each lapel so that when the sweater was buttoned up, it looked like the butterflies were kissing. It was the most beautiful dress Jade had ever seen. She loved it and wore it whenever Ruth allowed. One Sunday, when Jade was wearing the dress, she ran into Mrs. Walden and Beth Ann in town. To her surprise, Beth Ann started crying. She looked at her mother and said that Jade was prettier in the dress than she had been.

Beneath the shame and embarrassment, Jade tasted joy. Washing dishes in the Longier home as Ruth’s assistant, raking leaves in the Longier yard as Jonah’s helper, Jade had never dreamed that she would have anything that a rich little white girl would want. It felt good.

Jade stared at the lights of the Walden home and thought about those days. Beth Ann had grown up to marry a doctor in Jackson, Mississippi. Her picture had run in the local newspaper, her long chestnut hair shining, a string of pearls around her neck, and her veil pulled back to reveal her smile. That was ten years ago. Most of the young women Jade’s age, black or white, were married, many of them moved away. Jade had not married. In fact, had dated little. She had been bedded, because she could not halt the sexual needs of her body even though her heart was not engaged. For the most part, though, there seemed a barricade around her that most men did not care to climb. Frank Kimble was the exception, and Jade turned to examine her sister in an effort to stem the hot surge of desire that thoughts of Frank generated. She was too old to let a man make a fool of her, too old and too careful. Lust would not be her undoing.

Marlena tossed on the pillow, and Jade soaked a cloth in cold water and made a compress for her sister’s forehead. Marlena’s fever was high, and Jade knew the doctor was worried. He’d been in once and talked about the possibility of a specialist from New Orleans. There was a wonder drug, penicillin, and he’d given Marlena some without ill effect. He was going to give her more.

Marlena’s skin was smooth and hot, so tight it felt as if her cheeks were trying to burst. Jade touched her with the backs of her fingers, drawing them across the taut skin, whispering softly, “You have to get better, Marlena. We have to find Suzanna, and we need your help. We need you, Marlena.” And it was true. The doctor had reduced the morphine to a level that should have allowed Marlena to regain lucidity. She had not. Jade had heard the doctor whisper to the nurse that he thought Marlena was deliberately avoiding a return to consciousness.

Jade rewet the cloth and reapplied it. She got hot, soapy water and washed her sister’s body, massaging her feet and legs, stimulating the muscles and the nerves. “Marlena, we need you here with us,” she said. “Frank wants to talk to you.”

Frank. Not Lucas, who had never come a single time to visit his wife. The whole hospital was buzzing about it, and some of the earlier gossip had even made its way to her four-thirty hair appointment, Mrs. Hargrove, who feigned shock at Lucas’s callousness.

“Maybe he’s waiting at home for the ransom call,” Jade suggested, a possibility that, because it lacked malice, had been overlooked.

A nurse’s aide came to the door. She was young and dark-skinned and looked at the floor when she spoke. “There’s a phone call for Miss Dupree at the desk.”

“Thank you,” Jade said, wondering why Jonah or Ruth had called her at the hospital. She felt her heart rate increase. She walked purposefully to the desk. The nurse hesitated when she handed her the telephone. Jade was too weary to care.

“Hello,” she said.

“It’s me, Lucas. How’s Marlena?”

She was surprised. “About the same. The doctor says he’s giving her penicillin for the infection. He said he’d be back at eight. He wants a specialist from New Orleans to see her.”

“I’ll try to be there, but I don’t want to leave the phone,” Lucas said. “Has she said anything more?”

“Nothing.” Jade felt a twinge of apprehension. Lucas hadn’t called while Dotty was sitting with Marlena; he’d waited to talk to Jade. Lucas was a deliberate man, so what portent was behind his action?

“If I don’t make it for the doctor, will you call me?”

Lucas had ordered her to do things. He’d left her written instructions on how to do things, but never once had he ever
asked
her to do a single thing. “Yes, sir, I’ll call after the doctor leaves.”

“Thank you, Jade,” he said, and she marked down another first. Lucas had thanked her in a tone that held sincerity.

She went back to the room and her station by the bed. Marlena was dying. She sensed it, even though the doctor would not say so. Infection had set in and was waging war, and it was winning. Part of it was that Marlena had given up the struggle. Whatever had happened was so terrible that she sought escape in unconsciousness. Jade’s hand trembled as it stroked her sister’s hot face. Jade put one hand on Marlena’s forehead and another, gently, on her heart.

“Come back to us,” she urged. “We need you, Marlena. We need you to help us find Suzanna.”

Jade’s hands lifted, hovering above her sister’s flesh. She felt the heat of the fever from a distance, and she concentrated on cooling Marlena, thinking of a chilled stream of water and Marlena’s body immersed, floating, face turned to the sun as her hair undulated around her head.

“Jade?” Marlena’s voice was weak.

“I’m here,” Jade said, opening her eyes. “It’s going to be okay.” “They have Suzanna.”

Jade didn’t dispute the fact, but she didn’t add more to it. “I heard her scream. The men came. One had Suzanna. He dropped her.”

Marlena wasn’t crying, and she wasn’t emotional. Jade felt her forehead, finding that the fever had broken. Sweat trickled down Marlena’s hairline, and Jade wiped it with the washcloth. “I’ll be right back. I need to find Frank Kimble. He’s been waiting to talk to you.”

Marlena shook her head slowly. “Tell him. I can’t stay. I …”

Jade knew she was losing her. “Marlena.” She shook Marlena’s shoulder lightly, and Marlena’s one good eye fluttered open, a slit of blue beneath the battered flesh. The bone beneath her eye had been crushed by the beating, changing the contours of her face. To stabilize the side of her face, the doctor had wired her jaw shut. Marlena would keep her sight, if she lived. And she would live if Jade could keep her from slipping away.

“It’s good here, too, Marlena,” Jade said. “We have to find Suzanna so we can both watch her grow up. She hasn’t had much of a chance to live. She’s just a little girl.”

“She’s gone,” Marlena said, sighing.

“Did you see her?” Jade felt a chill slip through the open window and touch her bare arms. “Marlena, did you see her?”

Marlena’s only answer was a smile. Her eyes fluttered.

“Marlena, if you leave, Suzanna will die.”

Marlena’s eyes opened, the bliss twisting into pain. “What?”

“Tell me about the men.” Jade knew her sister was weak. She was afraid to push hard, yet afraid that Marlena would die without telling what she knew. “Did the men say anything?”

Marlena’s nod was abrupt. “Mean things.”

“It’s okay,” Jade said, holding Marlena’s hand. “Tell me. You have to tell me.”

“Cunt. Whore. They said I needed to be hurt.” “The other man, what did he say?”

“He held me, while the big one—” Her mouth opened into the shape of a scream, but nothing came out and her head arched backward, the throat constricting, and still no sound.

Jade moaned at Marlena’s anguish. She regained her control and squeezed Marlena’s hand. “It’s okay, girl, they can’t hurt you again. You’re safe here, and I’m watching over you.”

Her words seemed to calm Marlena. “Did they say anything about Suzanna?” Jade asked. “About what they intended to do with her. You have to tell me. Think, Marlena, think.”

“Took her.” Her chest began to move rapidly. “They said I’d pay. Whore of Babylon.”

It was a phrase Jade had heard all of her life, and it had always applied to some exotic woman with bangles and a multicolored skirt who whirled when she danced and shimmied.

“Marlena, was someone else with you?” Jade felt like a traitor to her sister.

Marlena tore her hand free. “No! Not Lucas.”

And that was answer enough. “I won’t tell Lucas, but we have to find that man,” Jade said. “He may know something about Suzanna. Who was it?”

Marlena shook her head. Her features were contorted, whether by pain or her own thoughts, Jade couldn’t tell. “No,” Marlena said. “No.”

“Your daughter’s life hangs in the balance.”

Before Marlena could answer again, peace slipped over her face. Her body stilled to the point that Jade had to pinch her nostrils to see if she still breathed. She did, but when Dr. Miller and the specialist arrived at eight, the doctor told Jade she could go home. Marlena’s fever had broken, but she had slipped into a coma. The prognosis was not good, and watching her was pointless.

F
rank wasn’t unaware when he crossed the county line into Greene County. There was no change in the tall, dark pines that crowded Highway 63, and there was no sign saying he’d left Jebediah County for the even more rural Greene. As a county lawman, Frank knew the invisible line that marked his authority, and tonight he traveled under the guise of an unofficial visit, an attempt to seek assistance. Playing out variations of conversation in his mind, he continued down the gravel road at a clip that would have been dangerous had a vehicle come from the other direction. There was no traffic, making it more likely that trouble would come from a deer or cow loose on the right of way. He watched carefully but didn’t drop his speed. It had taken him almost two hours of phone calls to find where Dantzler Archey maintained his most permanent residence in the heart of the East River community. The man was a gypsy. He lived in log camps throughout southeast Mississippi, and over into the fringes of Baldwin and Escambia counties in Alabama where the Mobila and fragments of the Creek Indians could still be found.

Dantzler Archey was a timber man by trade and a criminal by nature. He took what he wanted, by whatever means necessary, and his brutal nature had cost him his son. Of course, Archey didn’t see it that way. From all accounts that Frank had collected, Archey was a man capable of the vicious attack on Marlena and the abduction of Suzanna. The lack of a ransom would also fit into Archey’s character, as Frank understood it. If Suzanna was in his possession, Archey would feel he had the upper hand. Archey would hold what he believed Lucas valued, and he would toy with Lucas until the last possible moment. Instead of feeling concerned, this actually made Frank feel more hopeful. It would explain the now twenty-eight-hour stretch without a word about the girl. A man like Dantzler Archey would want Lucas to sweat, to touch the wounds that had been so viciously inflicted on his wife, and wonder what was happening to his daughter.

In the stalag in Nuremberg, Frank had seen this principle at work many times. For the most part, the POWs were left hungry, dirty, lice ridden, and alone. But there was a Luftwaffe officer who took a special interest in the men of Frank’s barracks. The officer would walk through the prison, hair perfectly combed, uniform immaculate, death in his eyes. He would point to a prisoner, an arbitrary choice. The man would be dragged away by the guards, and the remaining prisoners would spend the next hours in a living hell. None talked, but each knew that when the taken man was returned, he would have lost something. An eye, an ear, a finger, a toe, a testicle, a strip of flesh, a bone, a piece of scalp. It was part of the method of torture. And nothing was worse than what the men left behind imagined. More than a few were driven to madness.

As a small child, Frank had walked among the dead in his family home. In order to survive, he’d learned to turn away from certain mental paths. Never once had he asked the ghosts that haunted him what they sought. Never had he allowed himself to think of what they might do to him. In the prison, he would turn and face the wall and let his spirit leave. Once he was free of the prison, he drifted past season and continent to the crisp fall weather of Jebediah County where he would walk through the woods with his dog, Getter. Morning mist glistened in Getter’s red hair, and the dog bounded ahead, eager to pick up the scent of a rabbit or deer that he would track for the simple pleasure of the run. Frank did not hunt. He woke up too often in the middle of the night to confront his dead relatives and the gory results of gunshot. Killing held no interest for him. Yet he had killed a plenty in the war. Sometimes those dead Germans rose out of the ditches where he’d bayoneted them, or stood on the killing grounds with blood pouring from the stump of an arm or leg. He had shot them, stabbed them, beat them to death with the butt of his rifle. Frank had been given two Purple Hearts, the Silver Star, and uncountable silent visits from the dead.

Frank made a curve in the road, startling a buzzard from a feast of roadkill. He slowed enough to give the ungainly bird clearance as it swooped up. Once in the air, it would ride the currents, graceful and determined. He continued on until he came to a rutted turnoff. There was no mailbox. Dantzler Archey wasn’t the kind of man who got letters. Frank turned slowly into the road and began to move more cautiously. He flipped the radio on, the sound of KWKH in Shreveport, Louisiana, belting out into the starry night. He did not want to come upon the timber camp unannounced.

The timber camps were legendary places where men worked hard all day and often drank hard through the night. Wisdom dictated that Frank didn’t startle the men, yet he didn’t want Archey to scatter at the sight of someone he knew represented the law, even though Frank had no jurisdiction in Greene County, and Archey, like most criminals, was an authority on the law.

The camp had been located in some of the thickest forest so that the men would not have far to travel. Frank wasn’t familiar with this territory, but he knew the Chickasawhay River would be close, so that the men could drag the felled trees to the river, raft them up, and float them to the sawmill in Pascagoula. Some of the more modern loggers were now cutting and loading their trees onto trucks and driving them to Drexel to the railroad spur. But some, like Dantzler, would die rather than add to Lucas Bramlett’s profits.

In checking around, Frank had found that the relationship between Lucas and Dantzler was beyond rancorous. It was abscessed. The men hated each other, and it was over more than timber and a dead son. Junior Clements, always a source of gossip, had told Frank that Lucas had gotten Dantzler’s sister, Katy, pregnant. Frank remembered Katy as a frail girl with large, violet eyes and skin as pale as moonlight. Somewhere around the tenth grade, she’d dropped out of school, and the folks of Drexel hadn’t seen or heard of her since.

The road narrowed and curved, and finally disappeared beneath a mud puddle that stretched the width of the road and for a good twenty yards. Frank got out of the truck and walked to the puddle, using a limb he found to gauge the depth. It was at least two feet deep, and the bottom was soft mud. He went back to the truck, turned off the radio, lights, and engine, and started walking toward the camp. In the still night he could hear a whippoorwill, a bird that old-timers said brought death. It was a sad and mournful sound, and he thought of the slender singer, Hank Williams, who lived his songs of temptation and self-destruction.

A chorus of cicadas whirred loud enough to deaden Frank’s footfalls, and then fell silent. It was then he heard the click of a hammer being pulled back. Frank stopped, his hands hanging at his side. He hadn’t brought a weapon, a deliberate choice that he now silently questioned.

“Hold it, mister,” the voice said, and Frank knew the speaker was male and young. The words sounded as if they were being gargled before the boy spat them out. Cleft pallet? Some type of speech defect? Frank stood perfectly still.

“Put your hands up.” The boy struggled with the words.

Frank obliged. He felt the barrel of the gun in the small of his back and knew that if the trigger was pulled, the best he could hope for was quadriplegic. After what he’d seen in the war, he knew he’d rather be dead.

“Move.” This word flew out, freed with such force Frank almost felt it against the back of his head.

He stepped forward, moving slowly and with ease. The gun stayed in his back and he didn’t try to turn around. He didn’t try to explain. The boy was a guard for the camp, and as such he had no authority to make a decision. Frank knew to wait until he talked to Dantzler himself.

They walked for half a mile before Frank saw the light of a fire and the sound of men. There was laughter and the rough scratch of a bow on a fiddle.

“Zerty!” The boy called out, another word he spoke with ease. “Zerty!”

His cry silenced the men, and Frank walked into the camp with his hands in the air and a rifle barrel snugged against his spine.

“Well, look who’s here,” Dantzler said as he came out of the rough cabin, pulling the straps of his suspenders over bare shoulders. “Deputy Frank Kimble, come to call on us. I wonder why.” Dantzler spoke to the group of four men in various stages of undress. Even from a distance of ten feet, Frank could smell them. He suspected the ground where they sat would retain their odor for weeks to come.

“I need some help,” Frank said, aware of the possibility that he’d miscalculated. He’d assumed that if he simply came to ask questions, Dantzler would cooperate. Now he wasn’t so certain.

“Help with what?” Dantzler walked around Frank slowly, looking at him from all directions as if he weren’t quite certain what Frank was.

“There’s a missing girl, Suzanna Bramlett. I know you and your men are experienced woodsmen. I was wondering if you’d help look for her. She disappeared downriver from here.”

Dantzler laughed, continuing his circuit around Frank. “Now that’s an interesting question, Kimble. Here’s one for you. How does a man go from being a decorated war veteran to a lapdog?”

The men all laughed and Frank forced his body to relax. “I’m a sheriff’s deputy,” he said slowly. “I’m doing my job. No more, no less. If it were your young’un missing, I’d do the same.”

“No,” Dantzler said. “No, you wouldn’t. I happen to know that for a fact because my young’un was murdered, and you didn’t do a thing about it.”

Frank had touched the canker that went straight to Dantzler’s heart. “Your boy was killed twelve years ago. It happened up in Stone County, and I wasn’t a deputy then. Even if I had been, it would have been in Sheriff Haven Tate’s jurisdiction. I couldn’t do anything there, and I can’t do anything here in Greene County. You know that.”

The men were silent, but the barrel of the gun was solid in his back. Frank hadn’t realized the boy was old and strong enough to hold it for so long. He turned slightly and caught a glimpse of the boy in the flickering fire and wished he hadn’t looked. The boy was badly deformed. What he’d thought was a cleft palette was far worse. Scars covered one side of the boy’s head, binding the mouth shut on that side, pulling closed the skin of a dead eye. There was no ear, only a hole.

“Stop lookin’ at me,” the boy said, his voice filled with hatred. Frank averted his gaze, looking instead at the men on the ground. They, too, had turned away from the boy.

“Tell me, Deputy Frank, why you came all the way here to ask for expert timber man advice. Seems to me your folks used to be timber men. Seems to me there are lots of timber men in Jebediah County. What’s so special about me?”

Frank turned slowly, until he faced Dantzler. His gaze passed over the boy, not stopping. He looked directly into Dantzler’s eyes. “There’s bad blood between you and Bramlett. If there was a chance you took the girl, I wanted to talk to you, see if you’d give her back. Try to keep the lid on this whole thing before it turns bad.”

“Did Lucas Bramlett send you?” The night was so quiet, Frank could hear the fire snapping and popping.

“No.”

“You came up here on your own to ask that question?” “Yes.”

“And you think you can do that and just walk out of here?”

“Yes.” Frank wasn’t afraid. That was the one thing that Dantzler Archey could not understand, and Frank knew it was his only trump. “Do you know anything about the Bramlett girl?”

“I could kill you and no one would ever find you.”

“Eventually they would. Times have changed, Dantzler. There are forensics now, evidence.” He shrugged. “If you’ve got the girl, give her to me.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then I’m asking for your help in finding her.”

Dantzler laughed. “You’ve got a set of balls.”

“Do you know where Suzanna Bramlett is?” Frank asked. One of the men to his right shifted. Frank caught the glint of light on a blade. Behind him, another man shifted. They were arming themselves. If they all fell on him at once, he’d never stand a chance. He didn’t look at the men. He kept his gaze on Dantzler. No one would make a move unless Dantzler ordered it.

“Boy, go up to the camp,” Dantzler said. When the boy failed to move fast enough, Dantzler cuffed him hard enough on the head to knock him down. “Half-wit,” Dantzler said under his breath. “Get up to the camp!” He drew back a foot to kick the boy on the ground.

Frank stepped between them.

“This is none of your affair, lawman.”

Frank didn’t answer and he didn’t move. The boy scuttled out of kicking range, got up, and ran to the camp, his rifle left in the dirt.

“You’d best get yourself back to the road,” Dantzler said to Frank. “Now.”

“Not until I know if you have the girl.” The men shifted behind him again, and Frank knew they were preparing for an attack.

“I won’t give you my word on anything. I don’t give my word to Lucas Bramlett’s lapdog, but you can go up to the camp and look for yourself.” Dantzler brushed past him, walking past the fire and into the woods. Like well-trained troops, the men followed after him until Frank was alone by the fire, the rifle in the dirt at his feet. He considered picking it up, but instead walked toward the camp where an oil lamp burned.

The boy was in there, and perhaps he’d be waiting with a knife or a gun. Frank considered the possibilities as he walked. When he got to the door, he smelled cornbread cooking. It wasn’t uncommon for the timber camps to hire a black woman to cook and wash for the men while they were out working the trees. He tapped lightly, and when there was no answer, he pushed the door open and walked inside a long, narrow room with six beds. The stench was almost unbearable. The room was a narrow tomb, without windows or any ventilation. He pinched the skin under his nostrils and walked toward a curtain that was draped across the doorway that led to what had to be the kitchen.

He could hear someone in there, possibly the boy, maybe someone else. Frank didn’t believe that Suzanna was at the camp. Dantzler wouldn’t give her up so easily, unless he intended to ambush Frank on the way back to his car. Frank clicked through the possibilities as he walked toward the curtain. For some reason, he dreaded pushing aside the cloth. Dantzler had set him up, and whatever Frank was going to discover was going to be unpleasant. There were few things man could do that Frank had not already witnessed, and sometimes participated in. Still, he dreaded the looking.