The Tree of Forgetfulness (18 page)

He didn't think that was asking too much. And it might have been possible if he hadn't just finished reading Barrett's story on the front page of the latest issue of the
New York World
. “Break in Ranks of Mob Is Expected Daily,” the headline read, and the story beneath it was his most confident yet. “Close to a score of men stood in the little pine thicket just off the red clay road leading to Columbia and watched the three Longs die. It is the conviction of citizens and public officials that such a large number of men, implicated in varying degrees, cannot keep such a secret inviolate.”

It was the idea of implication that was still wedged in his chest. Apparently, it was no longer enough to be
complicit;
now they were all
implicated
. And beyond the question of implication itself lay the issue of degree. How could you measure degrees of implication? he asked himself. How could one onlooker be more deeply involved than another? Down near the stage Lewis had found his mother. She hugged him
then turned to look for Howard, and when she saw him, she kissed her fingertips and blew the kiss his way. Just then the band struck up “April Showers.” The singer was a slender man in a tuxedo, a cigarette held between his thumb and forefinger, his dark hair so dense with brilliantine it reflected light. “Though April showers / May come your way,” he sang.

They bring the flowers
That bloom in May;
And if it's raining,
Have no regrets;
Because, it isn't raining rain, you know,
It's raining violets.
And when you see clouds
Upon the hill,
You soon will see crowds
Of daffodils;
So keep on looking for the bluebird,
And listening for his song,
Whenever April showers come along.

Libba stood in front of the stage, her hands clasped.
Perfect
, he could hear her say.
Heavenly
.

He started his tour at the table closest to the door that held the prize-winning blooms from every category. A blue ribbon with
BEST SINGLE YELLOW CHRYSANTHEMUM
printed in gold lay in front of a vase that held a spectacular six-inch bloom that looked like a small sun spreading its rays. The judges were right to choose this flower. Mr. Barrett was wrong to think of ranks. He knew it was only a figure of speech—to break ranks—but
ranks
conjured up images of order and disciplined purpose. The suffragettes had marched in ranks. In newsreels that played before the picture show during the war, ranks of our brave boys had marched against the Hun. A month after Sheriff Glover was killed, the Klan had marched in ranks down Laurens Street. But there were no ranks in the woods that night. No ranks, no plan, no one in charge, just inky darkness and shouting, the hard ribs of the field
he'd stumbled across as he ran toward the crowd, hoping he wasn't too late, then the pop of pistol shots, the boom of a shotgun, and a woman's bawling screams. No ranks there, and none here now, just men he knew, men like himself, dressed in their good gray pinstripe suits and gleaming, sharp-toed shoes, who shook his hand and walked among the tables examining the prize-winning blooms, accompanied by wives like Libba in their velvet dresses and high-heeled shoes and soft, round hats.

The week before the flower show, a group of these men had decided the town needed a pep talk, and they'd chipped in for a full-page ad in the
Standard
. Three lines of heavy black type,

Tell the World

You Are Proud to Live in

AIKEN
,

stacked above a drawing of a stern man slamming his fist onto a table. “Surely you have every reason in the world to be thankful you live in
AIKEN
,” the copy read.

Compare Aiken with New York, Chicago, or any of the larger centers of the country. There it is—“Everybody for himself. Get what you can, but get it! And the devil take the hindermost.” It's hustle and bustle every minute, with never a thought or a kind deed for a neighbor's welfare.

How different the spirit is here. Your neighbor's interests are your own. He thinks, “What can I do to please others? What can I do to help improve the town, help it grow, and make it a better place in which to live?” Your thoughts are the same. And through your actions
AIKEN
has become the best little old place in the world.

He had helped to write the copy for the ad. “How different the spirit is here,” was his contribution.

At six the band began to play “Tea for Two,” and the doors were opened into the adjoining dining room. Zeke lit the candles under
chafing dishes that held English peas and au gratin potatoes. He stood behind the serving table, white jacket buttoned up under his chin, inspecting the blade of the long knife he'd use to carve the enormous ham in front of him. The buffet line began to move past Zeke and then Minnie, who stood next to him, ready to serve the peas and potatoes. She was dressed in her own black uniform with stiff white apron and cap. Howard moved along the serving line, adding up the money again. Every year Zeke and Minnie were paid a lump sum for setting up and serving the buffet line and cleaning up afterward. This year, however, Libba had informed him that Minnie and Zeke wanted twenty dollars extra for the cleanup. “They're a team now, is that how it goes?” he'd asked Libba as he'd handed over two bills. He couldn't say exactly how it had started, but he only spoke to Minnie through Libba now, and Minnie did the same, and if Libba noticed that she'd become a go-between, she said nothing. “You tell Minnie we're square,” he said. When he passed Minnie's serving station, he made sure he was talking to the man behind him in line so that all he had to do was to hold out his plate for the peas she ladled onto it.

When dinner was over, the crowd flooded back into the ballroom and stood among the flower-covered tables. The tall arched windows had filled with night and reflected the blazing chandelier. It was the moment the day had been building toward, the apex of Libba's year, when she and Howard and Lewis went onto the stage and Libba stepped up to the microphone to announce the recipients of the smaller cash prizes and finally, the grand prize winner. “Welcome, all, to the Fifteenth Annual Aiken Flower Show,” she said, and everyone applauded. She touched her hair, said, “Goodness, has it been fifteen years? As many of you know, my mother started this show. As a young woman, I worked at her side, and since her passing, I have endeavored to carry on the tradition in her memory. And so life goes on, so it continues, and aren't we all grateful for this day that brings us together every year to celebrate earth's bounty as well as our deep affection for one another? And now, without further ado, I'd like to introduce my dear husband Howard, and my little man, my beloved son Lewis.”

As the crowd applauded, Lewis held still, nearly rigid with importance,
in his bowtie and vest, his white shirt and knickers and shiny new shoes, all bought especially for the occasion. He bowed quickly, one hand at his waist, the other behind his back, the way his grandfather had taught him. While the applause rolled on, Howard looked out at the crowd, picking out the men he sat down to lunch with on Mondays at Rotary Club, the men from the Knights of Columbus who raised their swords for the priest to walk under on his way to the altar on Christmas Eve. Were they trying to judge, as he was, to what degree they were implicated? They were all men of good character, good conscience. How had they gone to that place and stood in the dark? How had that happened to any of them?

He pulled the silver case out of his pocket, took out a cigarette and tapped it on the box, tucked it into his mouth, and lit it, without looking up. The business with the cigarette carried him through the applause, and when he looked up again, he saw Barrett leaning against the back wall, watching him. When Howard caught his eye, Barrett nodded as though he were answering a question or agreeing with Howard about something.

Behind them the band struck up “April Showers” again. Libba was about to open the envelope and call the first winner to the stage when a commotion started back near the French doors, and the sheriff and Frank Bell began to shoulder through the crowd. “Make way,” he heard the sheriff say. Zeke was backing through the swinging door between the ballroom and the dining room, carrying a tray of coffee cups, and when he turned and saw them, he looked around wildly as though he might try to run, but then the sheriff grabbed one arm, and Frank Bell took the other.

By the time Howard got down the three stairs and pushed through the crowd, Barrett was there too, and the ballroom was getting quiet. Even the band had stopped playing. The piano dropped out first, then the drums. The guitar player plucked a few more notes then put down his instrument.

Howard took the tray from Zeke's hands. “What's the trouble, sheriff?”

“Nothing you need to worry about, Mr. Aimar,” he said. “It's just your boy here's under arrest.”

“Sheriff, I have committed no crime,” Zeke said, taking care with every word.

“Be quiet, Zeke,” Howard said, never looking away from the sheriff. Minnie came through the door then. He heard her gasp, and he handed her the tray of coffee cups.

“Mr. Howard, sir,” Zeke said.

“Zeke, shut your mouth, and keep it shut,” he said. “What's the charge, sheriff?”

“Transporting whiskey, Mr. Aimar,” the sheriff said, as if the idea bored him. His big raw face was chapped, and his pale blue eyes looked watery, as though he'd just come in out of the wind. “Nothing that concerns you, I guess.” Minnie staggered as though she'd been shoved; the cups slid on the tray, and Howard took her elbow to steady her. Zeke looked at her and shook his head. “Go sit down, Minnie,” Howard said, but she didn't seem to hear. She stared at Zeke fiercely, as though trying to tell him something urgent with her eyes.

For weeks, for years, for the rest of Libba's life and beyond, as long as there was anyone left to tell the story, people talked about her bravery that day. Her mother would have been so proud of her, people said. In fact, many of the women who had known them both believed that the night the sheriff barged into the flower show and arrested Zeke was the night when Libba finally and fully became her mother's daughter. When the ruckus started, Lewis yelled, “Zeke!” and tried to squirm out from under her hand, but she held onto him and bent down and said something in his ear, and he stopped fidgeting and stood still. Then she held him by the shoulders in front of her, and the two of them waited as though she had perfect confidence that what was happening between her husband and the sheriff near the dining room doors had been planned and prepared for and expected, and if not, then it must be met and would be met with grace and dignity.

She turned and spoke to the bandleader, and very quietly, the men picked up their instruments and began to play “By the Light of the Silvery Moon,” and Libba and Lewis stood and waited, as if they were as comfortable standing on a stage in front of the whole town while
the sheriff arrested their girl's son as they would have been at home in front of the fire, as though they could wait as long as they needed to wait for this unfortunate incident to be over so that life could go back to being the way it had always been. Meanwhile, her husband and the sheriff traded angry words in voices so low no one could report with any certainty what was being said. Her husband leaned in close to speak to the sheriff, and the sheriff got in just as close to speak to him, until it seemed an afterthought that Zeke was being arrested right there in the middle of her flower show, in front of the whole town, not to mention the New York reporter, who watched it all with a self-satisfied look on his face, as though he'd finally got what he'd come for. During all that Libba stood quietly on the stage, just as her mother would have done. And never a word from her afterward about how disappointing it must have been. Never a word of complaint about how the day had been ruined. Not one.

Of course the sheriff could easily have waited, they said. He could have had the decency to arrest Zeke Settles outside the hotel, in the dark, where nobody would have been forced to watch. But you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Not that you wanted a lawman to be too silky; the job was rough, and it took a rough man to do it right. Still, the way Aubrey Timmerman bulled into the hotel ballroom that night was crude and uncalled for. But what did you expect?

As he hustled Zeke out, the sheriff made clear that his mind was made up: He was keeping Zeke in jail overnight; no need for Howard to come down and try and talk him out of it. “Me and old Zeke's got a lot to hash out,” he said, looking directly at Howard, and Howard knew he'd been warned. Everybody in town knew that Aubrey Timmerman had a special relationship with the law; he used it as he saw fit. Now, with the governor promising indictments and Barrett and Wesley Barton baying like the hounds of hell after the witnesses and perpetrators, the sheriff had to be everywhere at once, swinging the law like a cudgel against anyone who might implicate him. He'd made other moves lately: permits revoked; a man threatened with a loitering citation for standing in front of the courthouse for half an hour; a flurry of
liquor raids, followed by pictures in the
State
of Aubrey Timmerman, ax in hand, standing beside a chopped-up steamer outfit while a deputy poured the product onto the sand.

Minnie sat down heavily in a chair next to the kitchen door, still holding the tray of coffee cups. Her face looked ashy. “I'll be down to get you first thing in the morning,” Howard said to Zeke.

“Come as soon as you can, Mr. Aimar,” Zeke said.

He put his hand on Zeke's shoulder, felt it tremble. “I said I would, and I will.”

But what the sheriff didn't understand, Howard thought as he trotted back up the steps and crossed the stage and took Libba's arm, what he hadn't counted on, was that Howard Aimar would not be threatened or bullied, nor would he stand for anyone under his care and protection to be bullied. The only way to deal with a man like Aubrey Timmerman was to bare your teeth and get your hackles up, shove him as hard as he'd shoved you.