Cowart nodded. 'Maybe.'
The two men grew quiet again. Cowart looked down at the tape recorder and watched the tape spinning on its capstan. 'Why did they pick you?' he asked.
'I was convenient. I was right there. I was black. They made the green car. My blood type was the same – of course, they figured that out later. But I was there and the community was about to go crazy -I mean, the white community. They wanted somebody and they had me in their hand. Who better?'
'That seems like mighty convenient reasoning.'
Ferguson's eyes flashed, an instant moment of anger, and Cowart saw him ball his hand into a fist. He watched the prisoner fight and regain control.
'They always hated me there. Because I wasn't a dumb backwoods shuffling nigger like they were used to. They hated that I went to college. They hated that I knew all the big-city things I did. They knew me and they hated me. For what I was and for what I was going to be.'
Cowart started to ask a question, but Ferguson thrust both hands straight out, gripping the edge of the table to steady himself. His voice was barely contained, and Cowart felt the man's rage pour over him. He could see the sinews on the prisoner's neck stand out. His face was flushed, his voice had lost its steadiness and quavered with emotion. Cowart saw Ferguson struggling hard with himself, as if he were about to break under the stress of remembering. In that moment, Cowart wondered what it would be like to stand in the way of all that fury.
'You go there. You take a look at Pachoula. Escambia County. It's right south from Alabama, not more than twenty, thirty miles. Fifty years ago, they just would have hung me from the nearest tree. They would have been wearing white suits with little pointy hats and burning crosses. Times have changed,' he spoke bitterly, 'but not that goddamn much. Now they're hung up with all the benefits and trappings of civilization. I got a trial, yes sir. I got an attorney, yes sir. A jury of my peers, yes sir. I got to enjoy all my constitutional rights, yes sir. Why, this damn lynching was nice and legal.' Ferguson's voice shook with emotion. 'You go there, Mr. White Reporter, and start asking some questions and you'll see. You think this is the nineteen eighties? You're gonna find out that things haven't moved along quite as quickly. You'll see.'
He sat back in the chair, glaring at Cowart.
The prison sounds seemed distant, as if they were separated by miles from the walls, corridors, and cells. Cowart was suddenly aware how small the room was. This is a story about small rooms, he thought. He could feel hatred flooding from the prisoner in great waves, an endless flow of frustration and despair, and felt swept along with it.
Ferguson continued to stare across the table at Cowart, as if considering his next words. 'Come on, Mr. Cowart. Do you think things work the same in Pachoula as they do in Miami?'
'No.'
'Damn right they don't. Hell, you know the funniest thing? If I had done this crime – which I didn't – but if I had, and it was down in Miami? Well, you know what would have happened with the shabby evidence they had against me? I'd have been offered a deal to second degree and sentenced to five to life. Maybe do four years. And that's only if my public defender didn't get the whole thing thrown out. Which he would have. I had no record. I was a college student. I had a future. They had no evidence. What do you think, Mr. Cowart. In Miami?'
'In Miami, you're probably right. A deal. No doubt.'
'In Pachoula, death. No doubt.'
'That's the system.'
'Damn the system. Damn it to hell. And one more thing: I didn't do it. I didn't damn do the crime. Hey, I may not be perfect. Hell, up in Newark, I got into a couple of scrapes as a teenager. Same thing down in Pachoula. You can check those out. But dammit, I didn't kill that little girl.'
Ferguson paused. 'But I know who did.'
They were both silent for an instant.
'Let's get to that,' Cowart said. 'Who and how?'
Ferguson rocked back in his seat. Cowart saw a single smile, not a grin, not something that preceded a laugh, but a cruel scar on the man's face. He was aware that something had slipped from the room, some of the intensity of anger. Ferguson changed in those few seconds, just as effectively as he had earlier when he had changed accents. 'I can't tell you that yet,' the prisoner replied.
Bullshit,' Cowart said, letting a touch of displeasure slip into his own Voice. 'Don't be coy.'
Ferguson shook his head. 'I'll tell you,' he said, 'but only when you believe.'
'What sort of game is this?'
Ferguson leaned forward, narrowing the space between the two men. He fixed Cowart with a steady, frightening glare. 'This is no fucking game,' he said quietly. 'This is my fucking life. They want to take it and this is the best card I've got. Don't ask me to play it before I'm ready.'
Cowart did not reply.
'You go check out what I've told you. And then, when you believe I'm innocent, when you see those fuckers have railroaded me, then I'll tell you.'
When a desperate man asks you to play a game, Hawkins had once said, it's best to play by his rules.
Cowart nodded.
Both men were quiet. Ferguson locked his eyes onto Cowart's, watching for a response. Neither man moved, as if they were fastened together. Cowart realized that he no longer had any choice, that this was the reporter's dilemma: He had heard a man tell him a story of evil and wrongs. He was compelled to discover the truth. He could no more walk away from the story than he could fly.
'So, Mr. Cowart,' Ferguson said, 'that's the story. Will you help me?'
Cowart thought of the thousands of words he'd written about death and dying, about all the stories of pain and agony that had flowed through him, leaving just the tiniest bit of scar tissue behind that had built up into so many sleeping nightmare visions. In all the stories he'd written, he'd never saved anyone from even a pinprick of despair. Certainly never saved a life. 'I'll do what I can,' he replied.
3. Pachoula
Escambia County is tucked away in the far northwest corner of Florida, touched on two borders by the state of Alabama. It shares its cultural kinship with the states to its immediate north. It was once primarily a rural area, with many small farms that rolled green over hillsides, separated by dense thickets of scrubby pine and the looped and tied tendrils of great willows and vines. But in recent years, as with much of the South, it has seen a burst of construction, a suburbanizing of its once country lands, as its major city, the port town of Pensacola, has expanded, growing shopping malls and housing developments where there was once open space. But, at the same time, it has retained a marshy commonality with Mobile, which is not far by interstate highway, and with the salt water tidal regions of the Gulf shore. Like many areas of the deep South, it has the contradictory air of remembered poverty and new pride, a sense of rigid place fueled by generations who have found the living there, if not necessarily easy, then better than elsewhere.