Authors: Ace Atkins
“How ’bout a hot dog?”
“I thought we were buying groceries,” Billy said.
“Hot dogs are groceries. It’s food, ain’t it?”
They stopped up on the bluff and bought a couple hot dogs from a little brick stand and ate them in the car, the windows down, a nice little breeze coming down the street, working in the shadows. Billy watched his dad load them down with plenty of that free stuff, chopped onions and relish and the like, and part of it spilled down on his hands as he washed it down with a bottle of Coca-Cola.
“You think you could do a cripple?” Reuben asked.
“I guess,” Billy said. “I can do a limp and make my eyes go kind of funny.”
“If you could make yourself drool, we’d hit the jackpot.”
Billy finished up his hot dog and watched the people come and go from the little stand. His father flicked on the radio, and they listened to reports about some A-bomb tests in the desert, and knowing all that was close kind of made him feel better about the day. Before everything was blown to hell.
“I know of a few more neighborhoods we can hit tomorrow.”
“If you buy whiskey, I won’t do this again.”
“Goddamn it. I’m not going to buy whiskey. I told you that.”
“You did last time.”
“Well,” Reuben said, starting the engine and twirling the car around. “Well, last time I needed it.”
They drove over the bridge into Alabama and up the hill on Fourteenth Street, past all the jeeps and Guard troops. Billy saw a couple boys with rifles walking under the dead marquees smoking cigarettes. He turned back straight ahead, and soon they were headed up Summerville Road and home.
“I don’t think they’re going to leave till they find out who killed Mr. Patterson.”
“Shit, they know who killed Mr. Patterson,” Reuben said. He reached under the seat and pulled out a pint of Jack Daniel’s, taking a hit. “They just are doing this for the newspapers. Soon as Governor Folsom comes in, these people will be gone, and me and you can start making some money again.”
“Who was it?”
“Bert Fuller.”
“I guess everybody knows that,” Billy said. “Problem is that nobody saw him.”
Reuben took a hit of the whiskey and wheeled onto the long dirt road that would take them home. The sun had started to dip to the west, and everything was nice and gold and warm on a hot August day.
“Someone saw him,” Reuben said.
Billy looked over at his dad and pulled a cigarette from his pack of Luckies. He fiddled with the lighter in the dash.
“I seen that sonofabitch standing in that alley beside the Elite not two minutes before Mr. Patterson was shot. He was crouched down behind a car. I wasn’t the only one either. I seen two more people walk right by that sonofabitch and look him right in the face.”
Billy stared over at his father and couldn’t breathe for a moment. His father shook his head and put an index finger to his lips. “You think I’m messin’ with that clusterfuck and get myself killed? Hell, no, son.”
He parked the car in front of the farmhouse but only got halfway there when the screen door of the porch creaked open and out walked Johnnie Benefield with a sling on his arm and a smile on his face.
WE FOUND HILDA COULTER IN TOWN AT THE LITTLE
flower shop she ran right next door to Hoyt Shepherd’s pool hall. In back, she arranged some spindly white flowers at a table with what seemed to be some kind of fern. Hilda was in her late twenties or early thirties, and wore a blue dress with a tiny belt at the waist. She was a brunette, with big, perfectly done hair, and looked downright annoyed when we walked in and she had to turn down a small radio that played Rosemary Clooney.
We all knew each other. Hilda had started the RBA’s women’s auxiliary in ’52. She was a firecracker. A female version of Hugh Britton who would run with any assignment that old Albert Patterson had given her, from campaigning to visiting officers at Fort Benning. She didn’t think anything of talking down to some generals in the most genteel language about what services were offered for the soldiers.
She kept on with the arrangement, adding in some long-stemmed roses, measuring the stem and then cutting a bit back.
“Hey there, Hilda,” Britton said.
“What do you boys want?”
“We need some help.”
“Lamar, can you tell Joyce to call me? I’ve been trying to get an appointment all week. I need to get my roots done.”
“She’s been a little busy.”
“’Spec so, with you playing sheriff.”
“I’m not playing sheriff, Hilda. I am the sheriff.”
“Appointed, Lamar. Don’t let it go to your head,” she said. “So what’s the favor?”
Britton ran a hand over the back of his neck and remembered to take off his hat. “We want you to swear out a warrant on Bert Fuller.”
She kept on arranging. No expression on her face as she pulled out the ferns and then added some sprigs of little white flowers. She poured some water on a green sponge and set it back in a vase.
“Can you believe the cost of roses these days?”
“Will you do it?” Britton asked.
“We can offer you protection,” I said. “The Guard.”
“I don’t want those boys hanging out at my shop. It’d be hell on business.”
She gave a little laugh and stepped back from the arrangement, her hands in the pockets of her dress. She smiled at what she’d done and then looked back at us. “Of course I’ll do it. What’s the charge?”
“You remember when Fuller was taking ballots out of voters’ hands a couple years back?” Britton asked.
“Sure, I filed charges then. But Sheriff Matthews just laughed at me.”
“File ’em again,” I said.
“Don’t you all have bigger things to charge that boy with?”
“It’s coming,” I said. “We just want to hold him here awhile. We just need some time to find some witnesses. We can get you before the judge later today. But I warn you, Hilda. You gonna have to stand up there in court, and Fuller may be there. The newspapermen will hound you, too.”
“I understand. I understand. You want me to do it or you want to sit there and try to scare me out of it?”
“So?” Britton asked.
“Don’t you boys want to bring something nice home for your wives? I mean, they put up with all your mess. We are having a sale on the most gorgeous little summer mix.”
“Sounds nice, Hilda,” I said. “Maybe later.”
“Lamar Murphy, I do believe you are the cheapest man I have ever met.”
“
I AIN’T EVER BEEN A FAN OF RED PUSSY, BUT I’LL BE GODDAMNED
if it ain’t sweet as hell,” Big Jim Folsom told Fannie Belle in the bed they shared at the Capitol Motel in Montgomery. The light barely broke through the shades, and due to the headache Folsom had from the fifth he’d drunk last night he couldn’t tell the time.
“Glad you like it, Governor.”
He leaned over the bed and looked at the watch on the nightstand.
“Baby, you mind turning on the television? I believe it’s time for Gene Autry.”
“You like cowboys?”
“I like his horse, Champion. I believe that’s the smartest damn horse I ever seen.”
Fannie Belle got up in all her white-fleshed nude glory, her sizable but shapely butt swishing to and fro, pulling the knob on the TV on just in time for the theme song “I’m Back in the Saddle Again” to start playing.
Fannie walked to the curtains on the second floor of the motel and moved them out of the way to look at the little horseshoe shape of the two-level units and down into a soft green swimming pool filled with kids splashing around and giving their parents hell.
Over at the little dresser, she poured out a little more Jack Daniel’s, handing Big Jim the glass. He took it but didn’t thank her, and watched as Gene and Pat Buttram found their way into another western town and more adventure. This one having to do with a hidden gold mine and some mean desperadoes beating up an old man.
Fannie, still as nude as a jaybird, lifted her arms up in the weak light of the Capitol Motel neon sign and played with and straightened her red hair, still stiff with spray. She cocked a hip and smoked a cigarette, looking down at the huge man watching a kids’ show, a glass of Jack Daniel’s in his hand.
“What do you say, Governor? You gonna give Phenix a break?”
“Sure thing, baby. Whatever you want.”
She moved over to the TV and pushed in the knob. The shooting and yelling stopped and the screen went dark.
“Now, why’d you do that, baby?”
She kept the cigarette in her mouth, hands on her hips, and stuck her big chest out. “Figured we need to talk a little.”
“I told you not to worry. Them boys will be out of Phenix City before I even take my oath.”
“Your friend Bert Fuller is gonna fall hard.”
“He didn’t kill Patterson.”
“I want your word you’ll get those troops out of Phenix.”
“Let them make their arrests and give a little show.”
“What about Fuller?”
“There is no one in their right mind who would testify against Bert. I have it on rock-solid authority that Bernard Sykes will never make a case for the Patterson killing. Hell, he has about fifty investigators who can’t even turn up a witness. What are the chances of them finding one now?”
“You think you can talk to Mr. Sykes? Get him thinking about his future in politics?”
“I better leave that one alone, sweetie.”
“You wanna bet?”
Fannie opened up the bedspread and crawled inside, laying her body across Big Jim and moving herself against him. She smiled at him and he smiled back.
“You don’t tire much, do you?” she asked.
“No, ma’am. I guess I never get tired of bourbon and pussy.”
“That’s why you’ll always have my vote, Governor.”
Big Jim leaned back and Fannie straddled him, as he hummed the opening notes to Gene Autry’s theme song.
QUINNIE KELLEY STOPPED BY AFTER SUPPER, MAYBE A
week after those first raids. He was sweating and hatless, and it was one of those hot summer nights where the temperature only seemed to grow in the darkness. I invited him in, but he shook his head and wanted to talk outside. So I walked him around back, near the shed and Joyce’s beauty shop, and we sat at a little picnic bench right near my canvas heavy bag.
Quinnie took off his glasses and cleaned them on the lip of his light green shirt and put them back on his face. He put his hands in the little pockets of his pants and rocked back on his heels, looking down into the dirt.
“You got something to tell me, Quinnie?”
The night air was filled with night sounds, and among the crickets and cicadas, head still down, Quinnie told me that he was sorry. He said he’d lied.
“I did see someone that night Mr. Patterson was killed.”
I waited.
“I seen a man come around the back of the post office and cross Fourteenth. I was standing right on the stoop of the courthouse, on account of making sure they was done with that Boy Scouts meeting. But I don’t think he saw me ’cause I’d just cut off the lights. He passed right in front of my face, right on the courthouse lawn, and ran around back behind to the jail.”
I rubbed my face and massaged my wrist, which had grown sore from a loose punch on the heavy bag. I walked over to it and let it rock on its chain, and it groaned and squeaked with its weight and gently pushed back on me.
“You see his face?”
He nodded, staring up at me. His face filmed with a light, sweaty sheen. “I haven’t been able to sleep. I prayed about this. I talked to my wife and my minister. Don’t get me wrong, I never met a fella more evil in my life than Bert Fuller. But when I heard y’all was about to charge him with murder, well—”
“Who was it, Quinnie?”
“Ferrell.”
Quinnie stood before me and shook, his glasses fogged from the humidity. But he held his ground and returned my stare.
“You can’t be sure of that. Can you, Quinnie?”
“I heard them shots. I thought they was kids playing with firecrackers, but not ten seconds later did I see Mr. Ferrell in an all-out run pass right in front of my face.”
“You sure it was Arch Ferrell?”
He nodded.
“Will you testify to that?”
Quinnie looked away for a moment. In the little back window of my house, I could see Joyce and Anne doing the dishes. One of my neighbors played a ball game on the radio.
“If they let me live,” Quinnie said. “What are the chances of that?”
“I want you to do me a favor.”
“Anything,” Quinnie said, hitching up his pants and standing as tall as Quinnie Kelley could ever stand.
“I don’t want you to tell a soul what you told me tonight.”
His face dropped.
“You’re not hearing me,” I said. “Just keep it to yourself until the time is right. And when it is, I’ll protect you.”
“How you gonna do that, Mr. Murphy?”
I looked away. I shrugged and put my hand down on his shoulder. “I guess I’ll figure it out.”
BERT FULLER HAD TOLD EVERYONE THAT HE WAS INNOCENT
, but not a damn person would listen. He knew what people had been sayin’ about Arch Ferrell protecting him, but that was the biggest dang lie that had ever been told. Arch Ferrell thought just because he was a college boy, a war hero, and his daddy was a judge, that he couldn’t be soiled. But Judgment Day would be comin’ on that man’s soul, and all the stones he’d been throwin’ wouldn’t protect him a lick. When Phenix came a-tumblin’ down, every finger came pointing at the sheriff and his right-hand man, because that was easy. Those newspapermen couldn’t know what it was like to keep order in a town like Phenix. Sure, he’d kept a little nut away for himself, but he’d deserved it, trying to keep those Machine boys in line. It would take a powerful man to try and walk a mile in his boots.
Fuller finished up adding some clean shirts, blue jeans, and underwear to his old leather suitcase, and tossed in his pearl-handled .357s and his family’s King James Bible. On last thought, he grabbed the framed picture of him with Lash LaRue and buckled it closed. He buttoned his shirt, put on his boots, and tried on his Stetson hat.
It was midnight and time to get the hell out of Dodge. He wasn’t taking the rap for this mess.