I woke up in a sweat, and lay panting. I looked to see if I had awakened Tom, but she was still sleeping sound by the window that connected to the sleeping porch. She might have been frightened when she went to bed, but she sure seemed content enough now. She had even opened the window, which was a good thing, hot as it was.
The wind was soft and gentle, moving the curtains. It licked at Tom’s dark hair and waved it about. I was certain I could smell death and river water in the room. I checked about, to see if Jelda May had moved into the shadows, waiting for me to get comfortable again, but there was nothing there but the shapes of familiar things.
I folded my pillow and stuffed it under my head and took deep breaths, tried not to think about Jelda May Sykes. While I was doing that, I heard Mom and Dad talking behind the wall, just a buzz of words.
I slid over and put my ear against the wall and tried to pick up what they were saying. They were speaking soft, and for a moment I couldn’t make anything out, but pretty soon I adjusted, shut out the sound of the wind coming through the window by putting a hand over my ear and pressing my other one tight against the wall.
“… you got to consider that except for stories I haven’t never heard of a panther killing anybody,” I heard Daddy say. “My belief is they probably have. Some say they don’t do that, but I think any kind of critter can do that under the right circumstances. Even a family dog. But Doc Stephenson didn’t have no reason to suspect that. He just wanted it to be that way.”
“Why?” Mama asked.
“He didn’t want no colored doctor making any kind of examination and maybe knowing something he didn’t know. Everyone that’s got the mind to admit it, knows Doc Tinn is a good doctor. Better’n most, white or black. That’s all I can figure. And Stephenson was drunk, so I don’t think that helped his judgment none. He may have been showin’ out for that intern, Taylor. Though I don’t think Taylor was much impressed.”
“What did Doc Tinn say?”
“He said she’d been raped and cut up. The cut-up part was obvious. He figured someone had come back after she was dead, probably the killer, and kind of played with the body.”
“You don’t mean it?”
“Uh huh.”
“Who would do such a thing?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t even an idea.”
“Did the doctor know her?”
“No, but the colored preacher over there, Reverend Bail, he knew her. Name was Jelda May Sykes. He said she was a local prostitute and a… he called her a juju woman.”
“A what?”
“Some kind of witchcraft they believe in. She sold charms and such. She worked in the juke joints along the river. Picked up a little white trade now and then.”
“So no one has any ideas who could have done it?”
“Nobody over there gives a damn, May Lynn. No one. The coloreds don’t have any high feelings for her, and the white law enforcement let me know real quick I was out of my jurisdiction.”
“If it’s out of your jurisdiction, you’ll have to leave it alone.”
“Taking her to Pearl Creek was out of my jurisdiction, but where she was found isn’t out of my jurisdiction. Law over there figures some hobo ridin’ the rails had his fun with her, dumped her in a river, and caught the next train out. They’re probably right. But if that’s so, who bound her to the tree?”
“It could have been someone else, couldn’t it?”
“I suppose, but it worries me mightily to think that there’s that much cruelty out there in the world. I’d rather it just be one fella, not two, and if I had my real druthers, I’d rather it not be any. But as they say, wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which fills up first.”
“Jacob!” Mama said in what sounded like a not entirely offended tone. And then she laughed a little. “Such language.” Then: “What do they care if you chase this? Why are they so against it?”
“You know that much as I do,” Daddy said.
“ ’Cause she’s colored? But what would it matter to them if you wanted to chase it?”
“What if a white man done it?”
“Then he ought to pay.”
“Of course. But not everyone sees it that way. They figure a colored woman who was a prostitute… well, she had it coming. If it was a colored did it, one less colored woman for all they care, so why bother and upset the old apple cart. If it was a white man, then they want it left alone. They figure a white man can have his fun with a colored, no matter what kind of fun it is, and he ought not have to pay for it no kind of way.”
“When you dropped Harry off. Where did you go?”
“Into town to see Cal Fields.”
When he said that, I felt knee high to a crippled June bug. My climbing on the icehouse had probably got me sent home early, and Daddy had been discontent enough with me to drive me all the way home and take the ride into town by himself.
“He’s the newspaperman, isn’t he?” Mama asked. She was talking about our weekly newspaper, the Marvel Creek Guardian. “The older man with the younger wife,” she continued, “the hot patootie?”
“Yeah,” Daddy said. “He’s a good fella. His young wife ran off with a drummer, by the way. That doesn’t bother Cal any. He’s got a new girlfriend. But what he was tellin’ me was interestin’. He said this is the third murder in the area in eighteen months. He didn’t write about any of ’em in the paper, primarily because they’re messy, but also because they’ve all been colored killings, and his audience don’t care about colored killings.”
“How does he know about them?”
“He gets along pretty well with the colored communities here about. He said he’s got a nose for news, even if the newspaper he owns and writes isn’t one that’s worth all the news. He said all the murders have been of prostitutes. One happened in Pearl Creek. Her body was found stuffed in a big drainpipe down near the river by the sawmill. Her legs had been broken and pulled up and tied to her head and her body had been cut on. Like the one I seen today. Turned out nobody really knew this woman, though. She had sort of drifted in and got a job in one of the cribs over there.”
“Cribs?”
“That’s where the prostitutes work, dear. It’s a kind of house
… You know?”
“Oh. I’m certainly gettin’ an education. I didn’t know you knew all this.”
“I find out a lot doin’ my little constablin’. Anyway, she was found and buried by some Christians wanted her to have a burial, and after a time no one thought much about it. It’s the same old story. A colored murder isn’t something the colored say much about, ’cept amongst themselves. They take care of their own when they can, ’cause the white law sure ain’t gonna do much. In this case, wasn’t no one really knew the woman and wasn’t anyone suspected. Same thing was thought then that’s thought about Jelda May Sykes. It was figured a tramp done her in, caught the train out.”
“You said there were three.”
“Other was found in the river. Thought to be a drown victim at first. Cal said rumor was she was cut on, but he can’t say for sure if it’s true. Might not be any kind of connection.”
“When did these murders happen?”
“Best I can tell, the first one was killed January of last year. The other one, I don’t know. Don’t even know if it did happen. People could have been talking about something happened years ago and Cal caught wind of it. Or whoever told him might have misheard it. Or been yarn’n him. It’s hard to tell when it comes to the colored community.”
“Did Mr. Fields know about Jelda May Sykes?”