The Murderer Vine (17 page)

Mrs. Brady cocked an amused eye at me.

“Richie boy,” she said, “you know what you are? You are stupid.”

Brady looked amused but embarrassed. Cravens said, as if in total explanation, “Mrs. Brady is from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.”

“Well, for Christ sake, what other Milwaukee is there?” she demanded. She turned to me. “I ask you, don’t you get tired of people who always tack on the state? You ask them where they’re from and they say, ‘Los Angeles, California.’ Or they say something you never knew, like ‘New Orleans’ — now hear this startling news — ‘Louisiana.’ž” She turned back to Cravens. “Come on, Rich, give the man credit for knowing some geography!”

He said uneasily, “Well, folks, I got to circulate.”

Mrs. Brady folded her arms and stared at him as he disappeared. When he was mingled with the dancers, she said feelingly, “Jesus.”

She turned to me. “What do you think of
that,
Wilson?”

I grinned. Kirby said to me, “Darlin’, would you like to get me a puffectly delicious sandwich, honey?”

Mrs. Brady stared at her, loathing stamped on her face. I murmured, “Excuse me,” and left for the buffet table.

Owen Brady was standing there eating a roast beef sandwich.

“What do you think of our local fun an’ games?”

“Nice people.”

He had a wide, friendly smile. I liked him.

“An’ what do you think of our local Babbitt?”

“He seems very pleasant.”

“You know, Mr. Wilson, under that bland no-offense position which you feel you must assume, I seem to sense that you think he’s a pain in the ass.”

“No comment.”

A small man entered the room. He moved across the floor, stopping and chatting from time to time. He emitted a feeling of power the same way that radiators give off heat. He would give that impression, I felt sure, even if he were alone in a room, but what made it very clear was the way the people he talked to would hold themselves. Their upper torsos were always bent a little toward him, as if they were on the verge of bowing.

“Who’s that?”

Brady had been idly shaking an ice cube around and around in his glass.

“Who?” His back was to the man.

“The one everyone’s groveling in front of.”

“Why, I can answer that without turnin’ around. That is A.B.C. — Amory Blanding Carlyle. He’s small an’ has smooth white hair. Am I right?”

“Yes.”

Brady turned.

“He important?”

“You might say that. He owns the best farms, the best plantations. He owns the best banks. He controls all the political patronage in northern Mississippi. No one goes to the legislature down in Jackson or goes to Congress from around here or sits in the governor’s chair without his lil ole permission.”

“He looks like it would spell trouble if he was crossed.”

“Understatement of the year. He isn’t the best educated man you ever saw, an’ he’s a damn sight smarter than nine tenths of the college grads around here. An’ just about everyone down here’s afraid of him.”

“You’re not joking?”

“A man who controls the patronage controls the tax assessors. So he can break any farmer or property owner or industrialist he wants. Any black man who starts out in business an’ does too well or shows signs of friendship to the NAACP will find it’s real hard to get along. The labor or health inspectors will keep findin’ violations. An’ when he wants to renew licenses, he’ll run into all sorts of trouble. He doesn’t like women. He doesn’t like men, either. He doesn’t like food. He only likes politics.”

I watched the deferential smiles flowing around A.B.C. as he approached us.

“Look at the bastard! He’s as well-adapted to the Southern rural environment as an alligator is to livin’ in a muddy river.”

Brady went on, eyeing A.B.C. sourly. “Now, an alligator is downright interestin’. Sometimes, after a good meal, it’ll set on a bank and open its jaws wide. There’s a little bird that hops inside. An’ this bird pecks at the lil bits of meat between those long, sharp teeth. The alligator lets them clean out what they can find.”

“And these are the birds?”

“Some are. Some would like the honor.”

Brady went on about alligators. He knew a great deal about them. I listened, fascinated.

Brady filled his glass and went on.

“A man like A.B.C. has got to keep his power base in line. He does it pretty easy. He does favors for those poor whites, an’ they vote for him an’ keep the blacks from the polls. It works all right for everybody. If the blacks ever get to vote, they’ll just jerk that nice comfortable rug right from under A.B.C. So to keep settin’ on it, he sort of helps along the White Citizen’s Council.”

“With money?”

“You’re damn well right, with money. Here’s the old son of a bitch now, sneakin’ up on us.”

“Evenin’, Owen.”

“Evenin’, Amory.”

“How’s my lib’ral opposition?”

“Fixin’ to get you one of these days.”

“Anytime you want to spread around what the Voter Registration nigras say ’bout me, go right ahead. You jus’ write a big long letter to the papers.”

“You know they won’t print it, Amory.”

“Goodness me! Why won’t they?”

“Any other jokes for tonight?”

“Nope. You might consider printin’ leaflets an’ stickin’ ’em in all them rural mailboxes, Owen. No one’ll read them ’round here, ’cept you and eleven others.”

“I’m glad you pay it no never-mind, Amory. You’d have trouble with them big two-syllable words I’d be usin’.”

A.B.C. grinned. He turned to me. “Evenin’, sir.”

“Good evening.”

Now that he was close, he had the same feeling of power held in check that Parrish had.

“Visitin’, sir?”

“Yes, Mr. Carlyle. I’m doing research in Southern speech for my Ph.D. project.”

“You’re the feller goin’ around tapin’ my dirt farmers?”

“Yes.”

“Any time you want to tape a Southern reactionary politico, you tell Owen here an’ he’ll arrange it. I hope you like it down here?”

“Yes, sir. I like the people very much. Everyone has been helpful.”

“Yes.” He had wide, pale eyelids. The little blood vessels glowed in them. “We’re a hospitable people. Owen, you come on over on the seventeenth an’ bring Mr. Wilson along. I hear there’s a Mrs. Wilson.”

“There she is.”

He looked at her dancing with Cravens.

“A handsome woman. I hear she’s from Georgia.”

“Yes, sir. It’s a Northern victory, but since I’m Canadian I hope you’ll forgive me.”

He clapped me on the back. “You be sure to bring her, now!” He left and resumed his slow, triumphant tour of the room.

“He’s got a sort of charm,” I said.

Brady gave me a dry, ironic look.

“Remember those three kids who were killed down here?”

“Those Voter Registration volunteers, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Sure. But how do you know they were killed?”

“Oh, come on, Wilson. This is the South, and this is Mississippi, it’s not Connecticut or Wisconsin. The last night they were officially in existence, if that’s the approach you prefer, they were arrested by the sheriff for exceedin’ the speed limit inside the town limits of Okalusa. That isn’t plausible, because these VR people are very careful not to give any police officer the slightest excuse to get picked up. Now, the word I get around here is that the sheriff held the boys until he got off a few phone calls. While the kids were in the cells, he went out an’ broke the right-hand bright light bulb in their car. They paid their fine an’ he released them. Two cars were waitin’ for them three miles south of town; they recognized the car because of the single headlight, an’ forced it off the road. The sheriff followed a minute later. When the FBI came by an’ asked to look at the police blotter, there was no mention on it of the arrest. Nothin’. An’ why?”

“Why?”

“Your friend and mine, Amory B. Carlyle, had told the sheriff not to enter any arrest on the blotter without askin’ him first. Without any official record of the arrest, it’s awful hard to prove any official connection with the murders. That’s Amory’s charm for you. You just keep your head out of his jaws.”

“Ummm.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“Well, local gossip, you know. People like to believe lots of powerful mysterious people control all sorts of power.”

“You think mine is a typical case of the conspiracy theory of history as applied to Milliken County?”

I didn’t think so at all, but expressing doubt about something is a fine way to get someone to spill more.

I shrugged my shoulders.

He shrugged, too. Maybe he thought he had been talking too much.

“Your funeral,” he said, not knowing how close he was coming. He sipped his drink. “How’s life up in Canada?”

“It’s all right, I suppose. Good fishing. When I have some extra money — which is hardly ever — I fly up north and hunt caribou. Aside from that I find this Southern environment much more interesting; the cooking, the people. Things like that.”

“It is better down here. I tried livin’ up North for a couple years outside Milwaukee. My wife’s home town. Couldn’ stand the cold an’ those cold Northern faces an’ lookin’ at TV all night an’ no one sayin’ ‘thank you’ when I held the door open for people. Missed the warmth an’ the friendliness you’ll find down here even between a man who’d shoot his sharecroppers for votin’ but who’d go out huntin’ coon with ’em. It’s a complex thing out here. Don’t know where it’s goin’. You show you’ve got good intentions towards blacks — that’s the new word, right? — and they’ll back off. They don’t trust us. Why should they? They can’t level with us. Too many centuries of deviousness between us. An’ we remember what happened when they ran the legislatures the three, four years after the Civil War. The feet on the desk, the bribes, the corruption, the arrogance. But in a way I can’t blame them. Not after two hundred years of slavery. That’s what it came to in eighteen sixty-five. An’ I’ll take some of the blame. Well, that’s enough of a speech. We ought to shoot us a couple turkeys up in the hills next weekend.”

“I think I’d like that.”

“Good. I’ll phone you in a day or so an’ we’ll make it definite.”

He shook hands decently. I liked him. I liked the idea of rambling around the woods with him hunting turkey.

I turned toward the buffet table and began to assemble a heaping plate of rare roast beef, slices of onion, little plum tomatoes, and pickles. I filled another plate with tossed salad.

“You like spiced crab apples?”

Mrs. Brady was standing next to me. She was a bit unsteady but holding it very well. She must have had at least four drinks by then. She put a hand on my arm to steady herself.

“Sure, thanks.”

She reached out, grabbed a fork, speared two crab apples, and shook them off onto my plate. The juice splashed onto the sleeve of my jacket.

“Ooops!” she said.

“No problem.”

“ž‘No problem!’ Listen, buster, it’s a problem. Say it’s a problem. Say I’m a drunken bitch. But don’t stand there and be bland. Be honest!”

“And frank and spontaneous.”

She speared another crab apple and dumped it onto my plate. She said, fluttering her eyelashes, “Oh, Mr. Wilson, Ah think you’ll find these puffectly delicious!”

“You don’t have much fun living in Okalusa, do you?”

“I don’t have much fun living period. How could you ever marry a Southerner?”

I noticed that a few couples were listening with that here-she-goes-again look.

“She’s a great girl.”

“All right, she’s a great girl, but what about that awful, cloying Southern accent? How can you stand it? You seem intelligent, but admit it, buddy, you certainly screwed up on that one.” She dumped two more crab apples on my plate humming, “puffectly,
puffectly
delicious!”

“I’m going to get a demerit from you,” I said, in a jolly tone, “but I like her accent.”

“Don’t talk to me the way people are supposed to talk to drunks, goddam you!”

This was the time when a good husband should appear and take her home. He wasn’t around. I could tell from the way that the nearby couples were edging away that she was close to her lift-off time. I couldn’t see any way to ease out gracefully.

Kirby saved me again. She appeared at my elbow. “Mr. Wilson,” she said, “you dragged me here sayin’ you were goin’ to dance with your wife. Who’s your wife?”

“You, baby.”

“Dance with me,” she said, lifting her arms. I put my plate down.

“Excuse me,” I said to Mrs. Brady. “Duty calls.”

“Funny, funny,” she muttered. She waved a hand without a ring but covered from wrist to elbow with about thirty narrow silver bracelets.

“Take him,” she commanded. “But I’ll be waiting for him.”

Kirby smiled at her but muttered “Yankee bitch,” under her breath.

I grinned. Kirby had strong back muscles. I felt them flow like live little things under my palm. I didn’t want to talk about Mrs. Brady. I found her a bore. She was like a million other bored country-club wives. They were the ones I had to catch in compromising situations up North, and I didn’t want to handle another one down here. I was holding something unique in my arms and I wanted to concentrate on it.

“Ummm,” I said.

“She must be quite a handful for poor Owen.”

“Yeah.”

“What should poor Owen do?”

“He ought to be a little mean. Open the door on the hinge side once in a while. But it’s too late. Now he’s stuck with her till she sleeps with one too many visiting firemen. The local code demands that he kill the both of them.”

“Will he?”

“My guess is that he will, then commit suicide.”

“I think you’re right. I’ve been digging up information on him while you were talking to him and the witch.”

“He seems a nice guy.”

“He is. He’s also the town liberal. Contributes to the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP. Has local black lawyers over for dinner.”

“How come no flaming crosses on the lawn?”

“Old family, over here ever since the first settlements were cut out of the woods, around eighteen hundred five or so. They fought the Indians and were the first traders. His great-uncles fought in the Civil War; one was a governor, another one a senator. You can get away with a lot with that background.”