The sobs were getting louder and harder, and I felt out of control. Johnny’s shirt was wet and smeared with snot. He didn’t move, except to give me a handkerchief, which I demolished in no time. He didn’t say anything at all. I cried for awhile about what Johnny and I had done to each other, things we would never be able to forget.
And then I’d finished crying. My eyes were red and swollen and my sinuses ached. My head hurt like hell.
When I’d been still for a few minutes, Johnny gently disentangled himself from me and got up. “Don’t move,” was all he said.
He went into the bathroom, and I heard the water running. He came back with a hand towel wrung out in cold water. He lifted my face with one hand, and with the other softly wiped my face clean. He went back, rinsed out the towel again. He told me to lie down on the couch, and I did. He folded the towel carefully, and laid the cool cloth across my swollen, ugly eyes.
He went away for awhile, to make phone calls and talk to his officers. Then he came back, took me out to his car and took me home.
Momma was in the kitchen. She started making coffee when we came in. He walked me to my bedroom door. I threw myself on the bed with all my clothes on. I think I went right to sleep, but in my dreams Momma and Daddy and Johnny were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and talking in a low murmur, and I couldn’t hear what they were saying.
I got up about five in the afternoon. Dinnertime in that part of the world. Momma fixed me a plate, and I sat down to eat it. She sat down across from me.
“You got a couple of calls this afternoon.”
“Did I?” I was buttering biscuits like there was no tomorrow.
“Johnny called to tell you that Forrest Miller isn’t going to press charges.”
I nodded, added fig preserves to one of my biscuits. One just butter and biscuit, austere, as it were. The other with the sweet richness of figs. I wasn’t surprised by the news. I had woken up with several certainties right there in my mind, all orderly and ready, even before I opened my eyes.
One of them had been that Forrest wouldn’t press charges. If he did, I would defend myself by dragging in Elijah’s murder and the Klan. A lot of it wouldn’t be admissible, of course, but Forrest wouldn’t want to open himself up to any of the publicity and scandal.
The other certainty was that I was going to do my damnedest to tell the story I knew, about Billie and Elijah and the murder, and tell it the best I knew how, come hell or high water. I’d need to talk to Sapphire and Etta Mae, of course, because they might not want to stay in that isolated little house in Sheriff Pierre country once the shit hit the fan. On the other hand, they were two strong women, and they just might. There were others who were going to be hurt by what I was going to do—I thought of Johnny’s face when I told him about his father in the photograph—and there were still others that were just going to be angry at me for making such a fuss and causing so much trouble. I hated to think I was risking the tentative connections I’d made with my parents. But I’d made up my mind to let the chips fall where they might. It wasn’t the kind of carelessness I’d usually been guilty of, the not thinking things through kind. I’d thought it up one side and down the other, and I knew I was going to hurt for the folks I was hurting, but I was going to do it anyway.
Momma continued, “He had more to say, too, but, really, I think it best you hear it from the horse’s mouth.”
“Hear what, Momma?” A car pulled up in the driveway as I spoke.
“Look, here he is now, with little Susan Dalman. That poor child.”
My appetite evaporated suddenly. Momma hurried to clear away my dishes and put up more coffee. She had it perking before they got to the kitchen door. She put out cups and fixings, and then discreetly floated away towards the back of the house.
Susan’s face was pale; she wasn’t wearing make-up, and she wasn’t smiling. In spite of that, she didn’t seem to be falling apart. There was a sense of serenity and composure about her that I’d never seen before.
Johnny was pale, too, and he did seem nervous. His hands trembled slightly and he had trouble with the cover to the sugar bowl.
Susan spoke first. “We’re on our way to the station, Laurie, but I had to see you first.”
I nodded, immensely lost and curious. Was she going to apologize to me for having to back up Tom and Forrest’s stories? That wasn’t something she’d say in front of Johnny, was it?
Johnny placed a thin folder on Momma’s wood-grained formica table and pushed it toward me. Nobody said anything. The two of them just watched me as I flipped it open.
Inside was the photo of the armed men standing over Elijah’s body. I looked up at them in bewilderment.
“But Forrest burned... Where did you... ?”
“I slipped it down the front of my shorts.”
“What?”
“When Daddy and Tom got there. Remember, you stepped out into the foyer? I waited just long enough to get this before I followed you out of the study. I’m sorry. I was too frightened to get any more.”
“Sorry?” In my excitement, I jumped up so quickly that my chair fell over on the floor with a clatter. Of the three of us, no one made a move to pick it up. “You’re sorry? Is that what you have to say?” I ran around the table to Susan and pulled her from her chair, wrapping my arms around her and holding her tight against me.
“Oh, Susan, I always knew you had it in you, I swear I did. I’m damned proud of you, girl!”
When I finished my merciless hug, I pulled back, arm’s distance away. She looked good and solid, but serious, and she gave me a slight, sad smile that was as real as smiles get.
I looked past her at Johnny, who was standing now and who also looked serious. “So, Johnny, what does it mean? Can we get him?”
Johnny’s voice was firm, but unusually quiet and slow. “Forrest? I hope so, eventually. He’s not in this photo, obviously, and only a few of the other men are. It’s a hell of a good place to start an investigation, though. I interview those guys, tell him I have the photo, and, believe me, some of them will start talking. We can offer some of them immunity in exchange for their testimony against Forrest and the others. We can exhume Elijah’s body, too, and investigate the cover-up in the coroner’s office. It’ll be long and hard and messy, but there’s a good chance we’ll reel in Forrest in the end. The photo by itself is enough for you to publish one hell of an expose.” He leaned over to the table and picked up his cup, took a sip of coffee, put down the cup, and stared in it. “And it’s enough to ruin my father. Hell, it’ll pull down the whole structure of this town, and I bet you anything everybody in the state will be making jokes about Port Mullet. Congratulations, Laurie. Not only did you burn your bridges behind you, you’re gonna leave the whole damned town in flames.”
I looked at Susan standing with her head bowed and I thought of what that photo meant to her marriage, to her mother, to her children’s future, to her whole life as she had known it before last night. I knew no words powerful enough to help her with what she had to face.
I turned back to Johnny. “But you’re going through with it?” I hadn’t meant to, but I spoke it in a whisper.
“Hell, yes. I’m going through with it.” He closed the folder, picked it up, and took Susan’s arm. The color was coming back to his face.
I followed them to the door like I was sleepwalking, the magnitude of the implications only beginning to seep into my consciousness. Susan put her hand on my arm and looked in my eyes. “I didn’t do it for you, Laurie. I did it for Billie. I owed it to Billie.” We hugged again, this time lightly, as if we had already started to move apart. Then she walked down the sidewalk between Momma’s hibiscus plants, leaving me alone with Johnny.
Through the fog and confusion wrapped around my heart, I felt a sharp stab of pain. I didn’t want Johnny to hate me. I would still do what I had to do, but I deeply regretted all the sorrow I’d brought into his life.
“So, you’re leaving me with the ashes again,” he said.
I couldn’t reply.
He extended his hand toward my face and I almost flinched. He touched my cheek gently, a sad tenderness in his eyes. I grabbed his hand with both of mine, pressed it hard against my lips and kissed it. Then I let it go. He turned and walked towards the car where Susan was waiting.
“Emma’s a good woman,” I called after him. “Be happy with her. I know you have it in you.”
He gave no indication that he’d heard.
I walked back into the house. I didn’t know where Momma had been hiding, but now she was back in the kitchen, already shoving the coffee cups in the dishwasher.
Then she turned to me. “Your daddy’s gone to the airport.”
That was a surprise. “What for?”
“Another one of your calls while you where asleep. Your nice friend, Sammy. She’s coming to visit. Says she was worried about you. Makes me feel better, knowing someone is looking out for you like that.”
I looked around the kitchen like I was looking for an escape. Sammy? Here? I was more than ready to leave this place, go back to my real life. Home. My home was in the city. Even Momma had said it like that.
I didn’t want Sammy to see me at my parents’ house. I didn’t want her to see her lover as a trapped adolescent, acting like a jerk around her family, being treated like a child in return. And I wanted to tell her what I had found out about her father on our own territory. I didn’t want to tell her in Port Mullet, where we were surrounded by the rednecks who had killed him.
I was relieved, grateful beyond belief, that my father had not been in those photographs. And I was grateful that he had tried to protect me from the ugliness of the Klan, by letting me grow up ignorant of its very existence. He had apparently raised my brothers to share his belief that the Klan was silly and pathetic. With a pang of anxiety, I wondered what he was doing that very minute. Was he treating Sammy with his patronizing Southern chivalry act? Would she know he treated all females like that, or would she think it was a matter of race?
My stomach was churning when the car pulled up. I felt as naked and vulnerable as I ever had. My major victory in leaving Port Mullet had been that I’d created a persona to hide behind, and, now, with my two separate worlds colliding in one place, I was afraid it was me who would suffer the damage. I might just disintegrate into bits of matter, flung out to float through the cold, empty distances of the universe.
They came in the kitchen door. Sammy first, looking great, looking wonderful, looking like sex and love and food and good times, just like I remembered. And Daddy right behind her, carrying her suitcase, smiling.
I hugged Sammy right there, before I said a word. I tried hard to make it the perfectly appropriate hug. When it was over, I was exhausted from the effort of trying to keep the balance right.
Momma had still more food ready, and she sat Sammy right down at the table, and fixed her a plate. To my surprise, instead of escaping to the living room to watch TV, Daddy sat down at the table, too. The two of them asked Sammy questions about her daughters and her profession. They seemed honestly interested in the answers. Sammy fished her picture album of the girls out of her purse, and handed it to Daddy. He and Momma oohed and aahed over them while Sammy finished her banana cream pie.
Afterwards, Sammy accepted my mother’s suggestion that she “freshen up.” After she left the room, Daddy said to me, “That’s sure one fine-looking woman.” I blushed. Then I worried that perhaps he was expressing his own interest in her, not complimenting my own. I hoped not. I’d made a lot of progress this trip to Port Mullet, but I wasn’t yet ready to accept any suggestion that my father and I were turned on by the same woman.
I ran after Sammy and caught up with her in the hallway right outside my bedroom. We kissed again, more passionately this time. I was carried away by the sweetness and familiarity of Sammy’s lips and mouth and tongue, and yet I was aware of the tingle in my stomach, the danger. After all, this was my parents’ house, and someone could walk in on us any minute. And I’m telling you, that added a fizzy kick to the kiss that made it that much better.
When I forced myself to pull away, I asked her how she’d been able to take a break. She told me she had arranged for another midwife to take her calls for a few days, so that we could spend some time alone together. She said that while I’d been gone, Rachel had finally been weaned. Sammy attributed that occurrence to the security Rachel had felt in not having to share her mother with me for a few days. Now it was my turn to have Sammy to myself. But should an emergency arise, with the patients or with the girls, we’d be on the first plane out.
While she was explaining, I pushed open the door to my bedroom. For a moment her face reflected the dissonance between the flowered and ruffled decorating scheme and what she knew of my taste. Then she said, “Your father must have put my suitcase somewhere else, it’s not in here.”
So much had happened since I woke up that morning that I hadn’t even spotted the mine field that we now had to cross. “Uh. Well. I bet he put it in the guest room. Really Momma’s sewing room. Next door.”
I backed out of my room and opened the next door. Sammy followed me, a knowing grin slowly taking over her face. “Yep,” I said, “here it is. Right here in the guest room. Next door to my room.”
Sammy walked over, reached down and put her hand on the handle of the suitcase.
“Uh, Sammy…”
“Yes,” she said, sweetly.
“I have something to tell you,” I began.
“You didn’t tell them,” she said. She didn’t look angry. She was still smiling.
“Nope. I meant to, you see, but—”
“You went and told my mother.
And
my aunt. But you didn’t even tell your own parents. Who you’ve been staying with all this time. I tell you, you’re one courageous girl detective, Laurie.” But she was still smiling.
“Well, you see, it’s like this...”
“No,” she said, picking up the suitcase, and heading for my bedroom. “It’s like this. You tell them now. Right now. Or I’m taking my suitcase right back to the airport and getting on the first plane north.” She swung her suitcase up on my bed and snapped open the latches. She looked at her watch. “I need a shower and clean clothes. So you have, let’s say, twenty minutes. That ought to be long enough. Have fun.” Then she started pulling things out of her bag. I had clearly been dismissed.
I left Sammy and went back into the kitchen, determined to engage in mature conversation with my parents. I had a plan designed to prevent me from taking off on some piece of impulsive bad behavior, however momentarily satisfying it might be. My plan was to take Sammy down to Sanibel Island, for two days and nights of beautiful solitude. I figured we could leave in the morning for a holiday of swimming, and beach combing, good seafood and wine, along with long, frantic nights of sex. I was going to keep this delightful prospect in mind, the carrot I dangled in front of myself to ensure my own good behavior.
Now was the time. I was a grown-up, wasn’t I? I couldn’t just hide my lover away in New York, and fail to acknowledge her in front of my family. If I did, I was still a kid, still running away from being Coach Coldwater’s little girl, instead of moving towards who I wanted to be.
“That’s one nice girl, that Sammy,” said Daddy.
“I’m glad you like her.” I stumbled on, opting for immediate disclosure instead of graceful build up. I was afraid that if I took my time, I might chicken out. “She’s my girlfriend. My lover. And her little girls, Annie, Sarah, and Rachel, they’re special to me, too.”