'Why don't you start by telling me a little bit about yourself? Like, how come a person from Pachoula doesn't have an accent?'
Ferguson laughed again. 'I can, if you want to hear it. I mean, if'n I'z wan'ta, I'z kin speechify lak da tiredest ol' backwoods black you done ever heard… ' Ferguson sat back, sort of slumping into his chair, mimicking a man rocking in a rocking chair. The slow drawl of his words seemed to sweeten the still air of the small room. Then he pitched forward abruptly and the accent shifted. 'Yo, mutha, I ken also talk like a homeboy from da streets, 'cause I know dat sheeit jes' as well. Right on.' Just as quickly, that disappeared too, replaced by the wiry earnest man sitting with elbows on the table and speaking in a regular, even voice. 'And I can also sound precisely as I have, like a person who has attended college and was heading to a degree and perhaps a future in business. Because that's what I was as well.'
Cowart was taken aback by the quick changes. They seemed to be more than simple alterations in accent and tone. The changes in inflection were mimicked by subtle alterations of body English and bearing, so that Robert Earl Ferguson became the image he was projecting with his voice. 'Impressive, Cowart said. 'You must have a good ear.'
Ferguson nodded, 'You see, the three accents reflect my three parts. I was born in Newark, New Jersey. My momma was a maid. She used to ride the bus out to all the white suburbs every day at six A.M…, then back at night, day in, day out, cleaning white folks' homes. My daddy was in the army, and he disappeared when I was three or four. They weren't ever really married, anyway. Then, when I was seven, my momma died. Heart trouble, they told us, but I never really knew. Just one day she was having trouble breathing and she walked herself down to the clinic and that was all we ever saw of her. I was sent down to Pachoula to live with my grandmother. You have no idea what that was like for a little kid. Getting out of that ghetto to where there were trees and rivers and clean air. I thought I was in paradise, even if we didn't have indoor plumbing. They were the best years of my life. I would walk to the school. Read at night by candlelight. We ate the fish I caught in the streams. It was like being in some other century. I thought I'd never leave, until my grandmother got sick. She was scared she couldn't watch over me, and so it was arranged I would be sent back to Newark to live with my aunt and her new husband. That's where I finished high school, got into college. But I used to love coming down to visit my grandmother. Vacations, I would take the all-night bus from Newark down to Atlanta, change there for Mobile, get the local to Pachoula. I had no use for the city. I thought of myself as a country boy, I guess. I didn't like Newark much.'
Ferguson shook his head and a small smile creased his face. 'Those damn bus rides,' he said softly. 'They were the start of all my troubles.'
'What do you mean?'
Ferguson continued shaking his head but answered, 'By the time I got finished riding, it was nearly thirty hours. Humming along the freeway, then right through every country town and back road. Bouncing along, a little carsick, needing to use the can, filled up with folks that needed to bathe. Poor folks who couldn't afford the plane fare. I didn't like it much. That's why I bought the car, you see. A secondhand Ford Granada. Dark green. Cost me twelve hundred bucks from another student. Only had sixty-six thousand miles on it. Cherry. Sheeit! I loved cruising in that car…'
Ferguson's voice was smooth and distant.
'But…'
'But if I hadn't had the car, I never would have been picked up by the sheriff's men investigating the crime.'
'Tell me about that.'
'There's really not that much to tell. The afternoon of the killing, I was at home with my grandmother. She would have testified to that, if anybody'd had the sense to ask her…'
'Anybody else see you? Like, not a relative?'
'Oh, uh, oh, I don't recall anyone. Just her and me. If you go see her, you'll see why. Her place is an old shack about a half mile past any of the other old shacks. Dirt-road poor.'
'Go on.'
'Well, not long after they found the little girl's body, two detectives come out to the house to see me. I was in the front, washing the car. Boy, I did like to see that sucker shine! There I was, middle of the day, they come out and ask me what was I doing a couple of days before. They start looking at the car and at me, not really listening to what I say.'
'Which detectives?'
'Brown and Wilcox. I knew both those bastards. Knew they hated my guts. I should have known not to trust them.'
'How'd you know that? How come they hated you?'
'Pachoula's a small place. Some folks like to see it just keep on keepin' on, as they say. I mean, they knew I had a future. They knew I was going to be somebody. They didn't like it. Didn't like my attitude, I guess.'
'Go on.'
'After I tell them, they say they need to take a statement from me in town, so off I go, not a complaint in the world. Christ! If I knew then what I know now… But you see, Mr. Cowart, I didn't think I had anything to fear. Hell, I barely knew what they were taking a statement about. They said it was a missing persons case. Not murder.'
'And.'
'Like I said in my letter, it was the last daylight I saw for thirty-six hours. They brought me into a little room like this one, sat me down and asked me if I wanted an attorney. I still didn't know what was going on, so I said no. Handed me a constitutional-rights form and told me to sign it. Damn, was I dumb! I should have known that when they sit a nigger in that chair in one of those rooms, the only way he's ever going to get to stand up again is when he tells them what they want to hear, whether he did it or not.'
All jocularity had disappeared from Ferguson's voice, replaced with a metallic edge of anger constrained by great pressure. Cowart felt swept along by the story he was hearing, as if caught in a tidal wave of words.
'Brown was the good cop. Wilcox, the bad cop. Oldest routine in the world.' Ferguson almost spat in disgust.
'And?'
'I sit down, they start in asking me this, asking me that, asking me about this little girl that disappeared. I keep telling them I don't know nothing. They keep at it. All day. Right into the night. Hammering away. Same questions over and over, just like when I said 'No,' it didn't mean a damn thing, They keep going. No trips to the bathroom. No food. No drink. Just questions, over and over. Finally, after I don't know how many hours, they lose it. They're screaming at me something fierce and the next thing I know, Wilcox slaps me across the face. Wham! Then he shoves his face down about six inches from mine and says, "Have I got your attention now, boy?" '
Ferguson looked at Cowart as if to measure the impact that his words were having, and continued in an even voice, filled with bitterness.
'He did, indeed. He kept screaming at me then. I remember thinking that he was going to have a heart attack or a stroke or something, he was so red in the face. It was like he was possessed or something. "I want to know what you did to that little girl!" he screams. "Tell me what you did to her!" He's shouting all the time and Brown walks out of the room so I'm alone with this madman. "Tell me, did you fuck her and then kill her, or was it the other way around?" Man, he kept that up for hours. I kept saying no, no, no, what do you mean, what are you talking about. He showed me the pictures of the little girl and kept asking, "Was it good? Did you like it when she fought?
Did you like it when she screamed? Did you like it when you cut her the first time? How about when you cut her the twentieth time, was that good?" Over and over, over and over, hour after hour.'