Walking Through Shadows (21 page)

Bill Calloway gave me a scoop for my story for the Thursday edition of The Lexie Journal. Since my discovery about Stoney Barnes’ sterility, I had begun to like the word “scoop,” deciding that one didn’t have to affect the mannerisms of a callow young reporter to be an ace in the field of journalism. My writing style precluded anyone from putting me in the same category as a hack, and I was beginning to feel comfortable with my role as hard news reporter. Truth be told, I suspect most of us human beings have a fondness for detective work; solving riddles and puzzles does satisfy one’s innate curiosity. And while I certainly don’t plan on journalism as a lifetime profession, it suits me until I complete my novel. So I wasn’t offended when Bill Calloway telephoned me at the office and asked me to come over.

And what a scoop he gave me! After I left Calloway’s office at the bank, my first thought was to rush back to my desk and let my fingers fly over the keys of my old Underwood. My copy was sure to be read and talked about by the citizens of Zebulon, but by the time I got to my Pontiac and had driven no more than a quarter-mile, I chided myself on my overeagerness. Something about Calloway’s readiness to feed me information about his upcoming case didn’t ring true, and I decided I needed to investigate things further before I wrote my next piece on the Stoney Barnes murder case.

I thought about driving out to Cottons’ Dairy to interview Mr. Cotton again. Did he know that Bill Calloway was accusing him of being the father of Sheila Barnes’ baby? And if he did know, had he figured out that Calloway was trying to throw suspicion on him as the murderer? But I turned my automobile around before I reached the dairy. He would say it was all a lie, of course. What else could he say but that? On the drive back into town, I thought about Lloyd Cotton and his comely wife and sweet little girl. They were a family right out of a children’s storybook. Oh, Mr. Cotton was a bit rough around the edges, but clean his boots of cow manure and put him in a proper suit, and he could pass for a gentleman. I couldn’t believe him capable of murder.

But he was an adulterer; Calloway said there was plenty of proof of that in Virgie Nell Jackson’s deposition. I had bumped into Miss Jackson several times over the course of the last few years, and I now recalled a brief conversation we had maybe two months prior in the post office while waiting for Mr. Gravier to open his window. I had been embarrassed by her flirtations. She is most definitely not someone Mother would welcome into our parlor, and I remember thinking that Mother would swoon at the sight of her large breasts spilling over the top of her dress. I admit it took considerable effort to force my eyes up to her crimson lips, rouged cheeks, blonde curls that spilled down over her forehead. If Miss Jackson had not been so heavy-handed with the makeup, I saw that she might be quite lovely, even though she was on the downslide of her thirties. Still I couldn’t visualize Lloyd Cotton and her together.

When I returned to town, I stopped by the Lexie County courthouse intending to run up to the second floor where Kevin Landry occupies a corner office. The Lexie County courthouse is, in my opinion, the ugliest building in our town. Our county board voted to tear down the beautiful old neoclassical gem that had served our citizens since the early eighteen hundreds and hired a German architect, named Grunewald, to design a “modern utilitarian courthouse.” The result of Grunewald’s efforts is a three-story red-brick edifice that resembles a department store. Nature provides the courthouse’s only beauty. Lacy light green ivy grows up the left side of the building and a magnificent two-hundred-year-old magnolia shades the brick walk leading up to the center door, which opens into a foyer where a line of stern-faced judges frown down from the walls upon those who pass beneath them. The center stairs lead to the offices of the circuit clerk, the archives library, and the district attorney’s offices. Behind them lies the courtroom itself, where what was now dubbed “The Dairy Murder Trial” would begin the following week.

I peeked into the courtroom, and seeing that it wasn’t occupied, I stepped inside. I imagined a film director panning the scene with his camera. Directing the lens from right to left, he would first show the windows that looked out onto the parking lot where Cab Nelson, Zebulon’s oldest citizen, sat on a bench already dozing in the early morning sun. Inside beneath the window, sat the court stenographer’s small desk, and five feet beyond was the raised witness box beside the judge’s bench. Flanking the judge were the U.S. flag and the Mississippi state flag and between them hung a framed replica of our state’s seal. Panning on across the judge’s high bench, there was the closed door which would open to admit the judge, the prisoner, the guard and bailiff. Beside the door two steps led up to the jury box, where two rows of folding chairs were unevenly aligned, awaiting the citizens who would decide Stoney Barnes’ fate.

The upcoming murder trial would be the first to occur in over a decade in Lexie County. There had been several other murders, but none of them had gone to trial. One, which had been covered by my predecessor, was the murder of a Mr. Otis Fancher, who had been shot by his neighbor, Sidney Odom, for severely beating Odom’s five-year-old son after the boy had dropped the oak bucket into the well the two families shared. Fancher was shot in the back after he jumped off his porch and ran across his yard trying to escape Odom’s double-barrel. When the sheriff and another neighbor had gone to Odom’s field to arrest him, he had handed the hoe he was using to scrape cotton to his son, reached into his coveralls, handed his wife a crumpled one-dollar bill. He then turned to the men, saying in a soft mournful voice, “I kilt the son-of-a-bitch, all right. Let’s go.” Before they took him away, he looked at his wife and said, “That dollar’s all we got. Spend it wisely.” Sidney Odom served two years for the murder and was released on parole to go home to help his family before they starved to death. No one, not even Mrs. Fancher, was sorry Otis Fancher was dead. She told the sheriff that Sidney Odom spoke true when he called him a son-of-a-bitch and gave testimony on Odom’s behalf to the parole board.

I walked over to the defense table and sat in the chair from which Stoney Barnes would view the proceedings. I heard a noise in the back of the courtroom and quickly turned around, feeling I had been caught in some unlawful or immoral act, but I had no idea what. The woman standing just inside the door hadn’t seen me, and I sat quietly observing her. I had seen her once before, at Sheila Barnes’ funeral, but I hadn’t had the opportunity to meet her. I guessed her to be around twenty-five years old, and although big-boned and sun-browned, she was quite beautiful with rich red hair piled high on her head. She wore a lemon-yellow suit and beige high heels, and as she began to come toward me, she seemed to glide across the room on her long legs. I stood and cleared my throat.

Startled, the woman stopped and her hand reached for the back of the courtroom bench beside her. “Are you Mr. Calloway?” she asked.

“No.” I started up the center aisle toward her. “I’m Leland Graves, reporter for The Lexie Journal.” I stretched out my hand to her.

She hesitated, but then proffered her gloved fingers. “I’m Earlene Barnes,” she said. “I was looking for Mr. Calloway. I thought, I thought, he said to meet him here.” She looked around the room. “But maybe I got it wrong.”

“His office is in the Mechanics State Bank building,” I told her. “Maybe he’s waiting for you there.”

“Oh, god! I think he did say the boardroom, not courtroom.” I could see the yellow flecks in her brown eyes as she lifted them, and I found myself searching for a reason to delay her just a bit longer.

“Barnes, you said. Are you related to Stoney, then?”

She frowned. Almost a pout, impossible for her full mouth to lose its loveliness. “Sister-in-law.”

My spirits fell. “You’re married to the oldest son, then. Hugh, I believe?”

“Yes.” She seemed nervous now, upset. Her eyes went to her feet.

“And then you must be the mother of the two fine boys Mrs. Barnes showed me photographs of when I had the pleasure of visiting her home.”

She smiled, and I admired her straight white teeth, the dimple on her left cheek. “Yes, guilty of the crime of mothering two hooligans.” But then her smile was gone as if she remembered why she had come here. “I shouldn’t say guilty in this room.”

“Oh, if these walls could talk, they would repeat guilty and not guilty verdicts for days. Months. Years.” Why, I chided myself, are you trying to be facetious; she will think you only ridiculous. I searched for something more impressive to say to her. She would be gone in seconds. “May I escort you to the bank building?”

I nearly ruined our parting with that question. She looked offended, lifted her shoulders, and pivoted on her toes toward the door. “No thank you. I’m sure I can find Mr. Calloway without assistance.” Her hand was on the door. She turned. “I’m glad I met you though. And, well, I don’t know what’s come over me, but I want you to know, I’m pleased it was you I saw today.”

“Me too,” I said. I think I may have blushed. “Thank you.” I stood in the courtroom doorway watching her walk down the hall until she left the building. “Thank you for what?” What was wrong with me? Earlene Barnes was a married woman with two children. She was also the sister-in-law to a man who may well have murdered his wife. No, I wouldn’t think of her anymore. I needed to keep my mind on the upcoming trial.

Tomorrow I got to go to court. Ma brought me some nice clothes to wear. Brand new shirt and trousers good enough for church. Mr. Calloway said I need to look like a stand-up citizen. I figure it don’t matter much, but I says okay to him. And Ma, she wants to believe her buying them clothes will save me. But there ain’t nothing on this earth that will save me. No, they’re gonna execute me. I know they will. I sit on my cot here in this cell and see the wall across the room, and I see the word “guilty” carved into the stone. At night Sheila comes in here and lays beside me, and whispers, “Guilty, guilty, guilty.” Over and over she says the word, and then she cries for me. She still loves me. She knows it’s Hugh’s fault, not mine. It’s Hugh they ought to strap in the electric chair, not me. He done it as sure as if he’d put his hands around her neck and choked out her life.

I told him so. I told him it were his fault the night I went over there after the funeral. I had to wait a long time for my chance ’cause he run off to Jackson on the day Sheila were found. But he came back after we put Sheila in the ground. I had left her grave and gone straight home, and Miss Cotton come by with some pie for me, and I ate that. I seen the bottle of hooch Hugh had left that last night he come up to my place, and I drunk up the rest of it. Then Daddy come by and told me that Hugh and the boys was back from Jackson. He was mad they had missed the funeral, and I was surprised at that. I reckon he liked Sheila a lot, but he hadn’t never showed it. After Daddy left, I knew I had to drive over to Hugh’s and kill him for what he had done to Sheila. Ma would have to survive it. I couldn’t do nothing else.

I remember I had my gun sitting on the truck seat where Sheila always sat. I run off the road once into a ditch and I had a helluva time getting the truck out ’cause it were muddy and the tires kept spinning. But I got there all right. The house was dark, so I shined my truck beam on the porch so’s I could see to shoot Hugh when he come out. I stood in the yard and hollered for him, but it were Earlene who come out first. I reckon she seen the gun ’cause she started screaming “no” or “don’t” or something like that, and went running back into the house. Before I knowed it, Hugh was diving off the porch, coming at me fast. He wrestled the gun away from me and it went skidding across the yard. I don’t remember what-all I called him, but ever’ time I hit him, I said what he done. “Sheila told me. You forced her,” is what I said. And he wasn’t hitting me hard; it was like I were fighting a girl.

Then all of a sudden, he pins me on the ground and says that she wanted it, that she liked him better than me. “You’re lying,” I said. “She cried when she telled me how you hurt her so bad when you done it.” Then I told him everything about that night that Sheila died. I told all of it, and I was glad of it. I heaved him off, but before I could get up, he lit out across the yard. I chased him, but I don’t know where he went to ’cause I never found him. I was gonna go after him in the truck, but it were the next morning when I waked up behind the wheel and seen I’d hit a tree. Hugh’s truck was gone and Earlene wouldn’t answer the door, so I went back home.

If’n Hugh comes back, I’ll find a way to get outta this jail and I’ll do what I should’ve done that night. I’ll kill him. But he ain’t coming back till they strap me in the chair and I take my last breath. When Mr. Calloway asked me how come my brother run off like that, I said what Earlene was telling Ma and anybody who asked — that he had business in Memphis to attend to. I ain’t saying no more about it, and when Earlene went to her meeting with Mr. Calloway, she probably didn’t tell him nothing. But she knows that when he comes back, I’m gonna kill him. She knows, but I’ll bet he ain’t coming back until I’m gone from this earth.

Mr. Calloway is smart though. I don’t know if he believed Earlene’s story, but he’s hunting with another dog now. Virgie Nell Jackson gave him that dog when she told about her and Mr. Cotton. Mr. Cotton could’ve been the one who forced her. I seen the way he looked at her, and there was that time she showed him her titties on the night I asked her to marry me. I said to my lawyer, “He could be the one.” But I’m the one they’re gonna electrocute. I know it. No matter what Virgie Nell Jackson says from the witness box, ain’t nobody in this town gonna believe that Mr. Cotton done it. Mr. Calloway keeps telling Ma that I’ll get to go home, that all we need is doubt in the minds of the jurors. “They won’t convict unless they’re positive he did it,” he said to her. “I’ll get your boy off.” And Ma, she kept grabbing his hands, saying, “Thank you” like he were Jesus about to perform a miracle.

Jesus does forgive us for our sins, and I reckon that’s a kind of miracle ’cause I ain’t never gonna forgive Hugh. If he hadn’t done what he done, Sheila wouldn’t be in the ground. If’n I get to kill him, I hope Jesus don’t forgive him. I hope he sends him to hell where he burns for eternity. I won’t go to hell. I’ll be up in heaven because Jesus knows how much I loved her. Love her still, even through death.