I’m not sure what this means, but five minutes later with a drink in my hand I follow John to his farm, which is north of Bear Creek about five miles out of town. Two brick stories with four columns in front, his house, a mansion really, is set back from the highway a good hundred yards.
Two horses stand at a white fence staring into my headlights. Built right after World War II, John’s home is still one of the largest in the area.
Beverly greets us at the door, and I am immediately struck by the affection between her and my old friend. Instead of just a dry peck on the mouth, she kisses him hard on the lips as if they haven’t seen each other in months. Since I was already gone when John brought her back with him, I never knew Beverly. Unlike Angela, she was born in the South. Afterwards she sizes me up like some quarter horse she might be interested in buying.
“So you’re the great Gideon, huh?” she says, her crinkled gray eyes magnified by gold-rimmed bifocals.
Taller than her husband and more muscular through the shoulders, her wrinkled face appears, despite her husband’s opinion, closer to sixty than fifty. I can smell burnt tobacco and spot a package of Camels in the front pocket of her blue work shirt, which hangs down outside a pair of baggy rust-colored pants. Though definitely not a sight for sore eyes, she exudes the warmth of a pot bellied stove going full blast.
“Your husband’s former partner in crime is probably a better way to get a handle on me,” I say, already liking this woman.
“My husband’s a boy among boys, and so are you,” she says, punching me on the shoulder lightly.
“I’m cooking. Y’all follow me,” she orders, taking my coat from me and tossing it carelessly on a small table by the door. Though the house is huge, and I am curious about it, I just get a glimpse of the combination living and dining room as we proceed directly down a hall lined with
books and family pictures.
We emerge into a kitchen that would service a small restaurant. A wooden chopping table sits in the middle of a brick floor. Against the far wall on either side of a stove hang enough pots, pans, and knives to feed all of the white population of Bear Creek. She tells John to fix us all a drink while she is cooking, and, needing no urging, he heads to a pantry at the far end of the room. Beverly points to chairs on the other side of the chopping table.
“So you defend people accused of committing crimes,” she says, winking at me as she begins to sprinkle flour on some kind of meat, I’m not sure what.
I take a seat and lean wearily against the table, already feeling defensive. If she is as conservative as her husband, it will be a long night. I look over at John, who is holding up another bottle of Jack Daniel’s. I hold up a thumb to indicate my approval and say to Beverly, “And others who haven’t gotten caught.”
She laughs, and scratches the end of her nose, turning it white.
“Criminals are the price of a free society, John is such a wuss that he’d be more than happy to turn this country into a worse police state than it already is. He’s scared to death some escapee from Brickeys will someday stop in and rob and kill us.”
I take a glass from John and watch him drop an ounce of liquor into it.
“Like the poor, they’ll always be with us, huh?” I ask, afraid I am
about to hear another diatribe against the federal government.
John, however, steers the conversation around to more personal topics, and instead of talking about her own boys, over venison, mashed potatoes, and vegetables served in the kitchen on the chopping block, she asks me about Sarah, and I come to life, glad to talk about a subject that to me, at least, is inexhaustibly rich. During my description of her personality, I let slip her latest crusade, which, I fear, is a mistake, given their conservatism; yet Beverly is more supportive than I could have hoped, telling me that she is convinced no one chooses to be gay. Why would anyone be that masochistic?
“She must be a wonderfully compassionate young woman. Most kids her age can’t think about anyone but themselves for more than a minute. You must be very proud of her.”
“I am,” I gush, noting that John hasn’t said anything. Because of the way we were raised over here, I can guess his attitude.
“She’s a lot like Rosa.”
John instructs me to bring out Sarah’s picture, and Beverly, like her husband, is properly impressed.
“She’s gorgeous! I’m glad we didn’t have a girl. I would have been jealous from the day this child was born!”
The conversation moves from her boys (she doesn’t want any of the four of them coming back to east Arkansas) to the topic I’ve wanted to discuss since I walked in the door, Willie Ting’s murder.
“This thing has stunk since day one,” Beverly declares, slicing off a piece of sourdough bread and offering it to me.
“Believe you me, the fix is in all the way round on this one. Johnson and Butterfield have been paid off big time. This is a capital murder case, and Paul is walking around town like he was given a parking ticket. It doesn’t matter what color the law is. It’s still business as usual around here.”
I take the bread and tear off a corner to sop up some gravy. How does someone like Beverly become so totally disillusioned that the only explanation for events is that the system is totally and unredeemably crooked? I’m willing to concede that a year ago, with white officeholders in power, Paul perhaps wouldn’t have been charged based on the evidence so far, but the mere fact that the prosecutor recommended bail and the judge accepted his recommendation doesn’t automatically mean they were bought off. Yet it is consistent with her survivalist mentality.
While I eat, Beverly and John argue whether Paul was involved. Beverly has no doubt, and John concedes that he could be, though he thinks that the charges against Paul could simply be a payback for his family’s long history of domination over here.
“Hell, Beverly, his family owned slaves,” he says, a little drunk since he has forgotten to eat.
“For all you know, Oscar Taylor’s grandfather used to whip Butterfield’s grandfather twenty times a day. They may say they’re not interested in
revenge, but that’s bullshit.”
Beverly helps herself to more wine.
“Your family owned slaves, too,” she reminds her husband.
“If Butterfield hated him so much, why did he recommend any bond at all?”
“John’s family wasn’t mean like the Taylors,” I interject, interested in both points of view.
“You don’t know,” Beverly says.
“They couldn’t have been too wonderful, or they wouldn’t have owned slaves at all.”
The truth is, I don’t know, but I do know the Taylors.
“It wasn’t just the way they treated blacks; it’s how they treated everybody.” For her benefit I explain about the two incidents involving my family, concluding, “Paul and Oscar were cutthroat in everything they did over there. It’s finally caught up with Paul.”
John gives me a quizzical look.
“I never knew that stuff or I had forgotten it.”
“Shit, yes!” I exclaim.
“Not only did Oscar foreclose on the pharmacy when he didn’t have to, Paul got my mother’s farm she inherited from my grandfather.”
Instead of agreeing with me as I expected, John looks puzzled as if he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. It pisses me that he doesn’t remember, but maybe I expect too much. If it had happened to the Uptons, he damn well would have recalled all of this. Meanwhile, Beverly continues to argue with him.
“Niggers have been taking money from whites so long over here they probably didn’t even blink when Paul offered them a bundle.”
“Beverly’s more cynical than me,” John says amiably.
“I’ve known Butterfield’s people for years, and remember when he used to climb poles in this area for Southwestern Bell, when there was such a thing. He’s an ambitious nigger, I’ll give him that. I could see him stealing an election like any other politician, but I’ll be damned if I think he cares about the money.”