True Fires (7 page)

16

Ruth Cooper Barrows, former reporter for the
Raleigh Observer,
former feature writer for the
Philadelphia Free Press,
supposed Publisher and Editor in Chief of
The Lake Esther Towncrier,
is on to something.

The feeling—
Billy Hathaway is a big, fat fraud
—hits her just below the breastbone; her reporter’s site-specific itch that must be scratched by the facts.

“Fact number one,” she tells her husband, Hugh, over their Sunday-morning coffee, “according to the operator, Hathaway’s home church—First Baptist of Houston, Georgia—does not exist.”

Hugh looks up from the stack of five newspapers he drove all the way to Hylandia, early this morning, to collect: Friday’s
New York Times
and
Washington Post
(their two-day delay “the price one pays for hieing to the hinterlands,” he says), today’s
St. Pete Times
and
Miami Herald
(“the only rags in the state—besides ours, of course—worth reading”) and
The Hylandia Sentinel
(which he calls
The Slantinel
for its way-to-the-right leanings).

Reading glasses halfway down his nose, a double ditch of concentration between his brows, he’s several columns deep into the
New York Times
’s lead story—“JUST A MOMENT, SENATOR!”—about the Select Committee’s surprising reprimand of Senator Joe McCarthy and their unexpected recommendation that Tailgunner Joe be censured for “conduct contrary to the august traditions of the United States Senate.”

It’s old news. But given Hugh’s history—his refusal, as managing editor of Philly’s
Free Press,
to sign a McCarthy-inspired loyalty oath, or, on principle, to ask his reporters to do so either; his “sign-or-leave” resignation, and listing, without cause, as an unemployable “fellow-traveler” in
Counterattack,
the Redbaiters’ Bible; all of which compelled their makeshift “retirement” to Florida—he can’t get enough of what he calls “the impending demise of that dimwitted demagogue.”

“Listen to the adjectives they used in their report.” His eyes twinkle above the flat, horntop of his glasses. “ ‘Contumacious, contemptuous, insulting, unworthy, denunciatory, vulgar, unjustified, inexcusable, repreHENsible!’ Who knew the old boys had that many teeth in their heads?”

She doesn’t begrudge him his glee. But, for the moment, it’s too soon, too hard, too potentially painful to buy into the idea that Joe McCarthy may be on his way out.
He’s been challenged before and fought his way back. In the meantime, I’ve got a
story to write.

“Hugh?” Had he lost his old Editor’s ability to read one thing and hear another at the same time?

“No First Baptist?” he muses. “How about a plain old Houston Baptist?”

“Got the number this morning, but,”—Ruth checks her watch—“it’s too damn early to reach the pastor. No doubt, he’s standing in the pulpit this minute, offering up the Sinner’s Invitation.”

Hugh squints at his own watch. “Third, maybe fourth verse of ‘Just as I Am, without One Plea’?”

“Fact number two: the Provost Marshall at Camp Lejeune, who claims to know every Drill Sergeant ever since ’22, never heard of one John Wayne Petty.”

“Or?” He’s reading again and, at the same time, raising a single inquisitive eyebrow.

“Or, incensed by our hero’s claim, one Billy or William Hathaway.”

He looks up, grinning. “You got him to crack the Camp files?”

“To expose a pretender to the pride of the Corps? Semper Fi!”

“Pretty contumacious yourself, aren’t you? Anything else?” he asks, moving on with relish to
The Washington Post
.

“Not until after the Benediction at Houston Baptist.” She checks her watch again.

AN HOUR LATER, Pastor Ted Bascombe confirms, “Sister Grace Hathaway’s been a backbone member of our church for close to forty years.”

“And Billy?”

“Well, Billy senior was a wild one. How a good Christian woman like Miz Grace wound up with the Devil’s own hind end is beyond me. Wild Bill, they called him, died young, running bootleg whiskey into Chattanooga.”

“So Billy Hathaway’s their son?”

“Now you’re talkin’ Billy the Kid, thorn in his mother’s side since the day that boy was born.”

“But he did join your church?”

“Billy the Kid? Not hardly.”

“So you never baptized him? Gave him a Bible for being a full-fledged member of Houston Baptist?”

“Only congregation that boy ever b’longed to was the Church of Charlie’s Pool Hall. Or the Clinton County Corrections Facility. You want the whole story, Miz Barrows, you best be talkin’ to Sheriff Jim Tatum. Let me get you his home phone number.”

SHERIFF JIM TATUM CONFIRMS that young Billy was indeed “a sliver outta Wild Bill’s quiver.”

“Claims he was a war hero in Korea.”

Tatum snorts. “He does, does he? Was that before or after he did two and a half in County Corrections?”

“You tell me. I saw him show a crippled hand to a crowd of four, maybe five hundred people, claim it was the Commies in Korea that did it.”

Tatum gets a rich belly laugh out of that one. “Miz Barrows, you ever been to Memphis?”

“Not in years,” Ruth admits.

“Sawed-off paws like Billy’s mean only one thing in Memphis.”

“What’s that?”

“Somebody tried to outhustle the wrong pool shark, and got himself caught. It’s Beale Street Bubba’s trademark for makin’ sure the cheater never holds a cue again.”

“Billy Hathaway lost half his fingers for cheating at pool?”

“You bet. What’s his scam now?”

“Membership in All White is All Right, A.W.A.R., five bucks a head.”

“Wouldn’t Wild Bill be proud!”

“Sheriff Tatum?”

“Ma’am.”

“What was Billy in for? In the County Jail, I mean.”

Tatum chuckles. “Oh, a li’l car theft, bad checks, moonshinin’. Ol’ Judge Shaw jus’ decided that boy’s mamma needed a rest from worryin’ ’bout where he was every night. Tell your local Sheriff—if he wants a list—to give me a call.”

“Sure,” Ruth says, the irony of Sheriff K. A. DeLuth calling anybody for help with Billy Hathaway lost on jovial Sheriff Tatum from Houston, Georgia.

RUTH LIGHTS A PALL MALL and blows slow, spinning smoke rings at the ceiling.
Trouble with a capital “T,”
she thinks. So far, it had proved easy to discredit the messenger, but what about his message?

Obviously, Hathaway played loose and fast with the facts of his own history. Were his Biblical interpretations equally bogus? But, the crowd had swallowed his racist rant wholesale. What would it take to expose the lies as thoroughly as the liar? As Ruth begins to make a mental list of local clergymen who might care to comment, the big, black phone on her desk rings.

“Ruth?” It’s the no-nonsense voice of Lila Hightower. “You heard about the cross-burnin’ at Charmwood Guest House last night?”

Half an hour later, Ruth checks the address in her notes once again,
147 Elm Street,
and scans the old house, a mansion really, for corresponding numbers.
Nothing there.
But the three empty nails on the wood above the wide, once-white porch show where they probably belong.

This place must’ve been something in its prime,
she thinks, realizing that although she’s been on this street a half a dozen times, or more—for receptions at the Mayor’s house, an interview with the President of the D.A.R., a meeting of the Ladies’ Historical Preservation Society—
I’ve never even noticed
it before.
Of course, the house sits opposite one of the grandest of the old Victorians in town.
Guess I’ve always been looking the
other way.

She looks again. The four-window bay, the prominent castled turret, the broad front and side verandahs are oddly familiar.
Of course:
This house was a much larger, grander version of her parents’ home in Philadelphia’s Powelton Village—
where Mama tried to wrap Poppy’s bootlegging in Baring Street respectability.
It didn’t work.
Prohibition or not, speakeasy or saloon,
Poppy was an unabashed barkeep with a blatant irreverence for polite
society. “Them and their airs,” he’d snort, “as if their whiskey don’t
wash in and out the same holes as everybody else.” Poor Mama.
Between the two of us, she never had a chance.

Ah!
In the front lawn, Ruth spots a large round hole showing dirt, grass heavily trampled all around, and, to the right, at the base of a giant elm, a long, burnt black log with two smaller ones beside it.
This is the place.

Ruth flips her notepad closed, slips it in the side pocket of her camera bag, hooks her right thumb on the bag’s shoulder strap close to her hip, and enters the walk.

Midway up, she stops to study the hole.
Too bad they took the
cross down,
she thinks, despairing of her hoped-for photo. The sudden screech of a door hinge, the appearance of a pert young woman, blond with bright, passion pink lips and sweater, draws Ruth’s attention to the porch.

“Oh, hi!” the young woman says, covering surprise with friendliness.

“Hello, I’m Ruth Cooper Barrows,
Lake Esther Towncrier,
” Ruth calls from the walk. “Heard you had some excitement last night.”

“Oh, Miz
Barrows
!” The blonde—scarcely more than a teenager, Ruth realizes, close up—bounces down the steps, holds out a hand. “I read your
article
about the Dares, ’Becca and her family. Showed it ’round to
all
my customers, too! I’m a manicurist down at Lucille’s LaMonde Salon. Oh, I’m Bunny Collins,” she adds, pumping Ruth’s tobacco-stained paw.

“Miss Collins, were you home last night for the cross-burning?” Ruth extracts her hand from the girl’s eager grip, reaches into her bag for notepad and pen.

“Oh,
yes
!” Bunny’s eyes appear, like shiny shallow mirrors, to reflect far more than they absorb. “It was just
awful
! We all thought Miz Betty had
died
of
fright
! Don’t know
what
we would’ve done without Miz Wexall’s smelling salts!”

This should play well at the LaMonde Salon, Ruth thinks. “Did you see anyone out front, the people who lit the fire?”

“The
Klan
? Oh,
yes
! But they were getting in their
trucks
by the time I got up. But Miz
Betty,
poor thing, she saw it
all
!”

“Did you recognize anyone?”

“Oh,
no
!”
Whenever she says “Oh!” or “No!” her eyes and lips
form perfect round circles, like that cartoon character Betty Boop,
Ruth thinks. “They were wearing their
sheets,
y’know. All I saw was a bunch of white
shapes,
pointy at the top, gettin’ in the trucks.”

“How many men? What kind of trucks?”

“I don’t
know
. Oh!
Pick
ups!
You
know, like all the men ’round here drive.”

“How many trucks? Did you happen to note what kind?”

“No. I don’t know. Miz Betty was
laying
there on the
floor
! I was just so
terrified
that she had
died
!”

“Thank you, Miss Collins.” Ruth glances at her watch. “If you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment with Mrs. Whitworth. . . .”

“Oh! Of
course
. She’s in the kitchen, poor thing. The door’s just over there, around the side.”

MRS. BETTY WHITWORTH, a stocky, graying woman who appears nervous by nature, has indeed suffered a terrible shock.

Like her tenant Bunny Collins, Ruth discovers, Betty Whitworth’s account of the Klan’s cross-burning is short on details of the event, long on description of its emotional impact. Worse than that, the woman seems incapable of completing a sentence.

“The flames!—Mrs. Barrows, my father built this—all I could
think
of—flames so close to the eaves—can you
imagine
?”

“It must have been horrible for you. How many men did you say you saw outside, erecting the cross?”

“Horrible??!! Mrs. Barrows, you’ve no—I mean, this is a respectable—We’ve never had any—not in
this
neighborhood!— Why, my father was one of the town’s most distinguished—of course, everything was different back—and my son, Clay, Mrs. Barrows—Fought with
Patton
! Africa to
Berlin
!—Like to see his medals, Mrs. Barrows? A real hero, my Clay . . .”

“How many men, Mrs. Whitworth? Did you recognize any of them?”

“Clay!—If only Clay was here—Well, if Clay, this would never—I mean—Leroy Russell!—they wouldn’t’ve dared!”

“What’s Leroy Russell got to do with this?”

“Well, he—well, I—well, no, I can’t be sure—I’d rather not—no!”

“And the Dares, Mrs. Whitworth. I understand they weren’t here. Have they returned?”

“The Dares?—Well, of course, I hated to—but, the others, my
other
tenants, they don’t want—and I can’t afford—
Really!
Like I told Miss Hightower—they’ve gone.”

At the end, Ruth’s notes are as jumbled as Betty Whitworth’s brain. She got answers to
who?
(Klansmen),
what?
(cross-burning),
where?
(Charmwood), and
why?
(“Cast the Dares out!”).
But I knew that before I came.
Although it was chilling to hear from Betty that the Klansmen had echoed the words of Billy Hathaway in yesterday’s speech. (“Cast ’em out!” he’d said.) The answers to
when? how? how many?
and any other significant facts were lost in the mental fog of the only eyewitness.
How in the world does this woman run a boardinghouse?
Ruth can’t help but wonder.

Two things, however, stand out—she’d underlined them— among the rambling references to Alexander Clayton, town pioneer, Clay Whitworth, war hero, General Patton, and Cash Whitworth, lakeside developer: the vaguely familiar name of Leroy Russell, and the fact that the Dares had been asked to leave.

Where did they go? “Check w/Lila HighT,” her notes say. And
who is Leroy Russell? What’s his connection to Betty Whitworth, her
son, Clay, and, if I remember right, to Franklin Dare and Lila
Hightower?
Ruth muses, as she shoots a close-up of the burnt logs with her Kodak, and a wide-angle view of the dirt hole in front of the pale, peeling face of once-glorious Charmwood.