“Mrs. Parker?”
“Did—did you find my girl?”
“Mrs. Parker, you’d best sit down, now. You sit down, maybe you’d let me call the minister to come over.”
“Mr. Earl, what is it, please? Just tell me. Oh, Lord, just tell me.”
“Ma’am, I’m sorry. Your daughter has passed. Someone found a reason to kill her. We found her off the road, twelve miles out of town, ma’am.”
“Oh, Lord,” said the woman. “Oh, Lord, Lord, Lord. Oh, why do he test me like that? He knows I love him. Lord, I love you, Lord. Amen, I loves you.”
She began to sob, and rocked back and forth in the chair. It was said commonly and Earl half believed, because he’d never tested it, that Negroes didn’t feel grief or pain like white folks; that there was something undeveloped about their systems. But not here: there was nothing Negro in it at all. Mrs. Parker let the power of the news have its terrible way with her. He recalled seeing men give in to grief like this in the Pacific, just letting it roar out and over them. He thought of his own son, and how he’d feel if he lost that little boy. He wanted to touch the woman, comfort her somehow, but it never worked when people with different skin touched.
“I’m so sorry, ma’am.”
“Oh, Lord,” she said.
He ducked into the house, which was dark and neat. He found the phone and picked it up.
“Operator.”
“Betty, this is Earl Swagger.”
“Earl, what you doin’ in Niggertown? That’s Mrs. Parker’s line.”
“They got some trouble. You connect me to Reverend Hairston.”
Betty put him through and he told the minister, who said he’d call Mrs. Parker’s sister and her aunt and be over in minutes to take charge. Earl went back out onto the porch, where the woman still sat.
“How did my daughter die, Mr. Earl?”
“It wasn’t very pretty. Looks to me like someone choked or beat her. I don’t think she suffered long.”
“Was she—you know, did he—”
“I’m afraid he did, ma’am. You know, these animals get heated up, they just can’t control themselves.”
“Oh, Lord,” said Mrs. Parker. “He done took ever last thing from us. Every last thing.”
“Your baby is in heaven where it don’t hurt no more,” Earl said. “Tomorrow, there’ll be some policemen to talk to you. They’ll want to know what time she left, who she was with, who her friends were.”
She looked at him.
“Mr. Earl, they don’t care about no Negro girl. They won’t ask a thing. It don’t matter to them.”
Earl said nothing. As far as the Blue Eye Sheriff’s Department went, she was probably right.
“Well, ma’am, since this happened outside of town, the state police detectives will have to work it. And I’ll make sure the work gets done. We’ll catch whoever done it, you understand? I swear to you, as I live and breathe, we will solve it.”
“Oh, Lord,” the woman said again, knitting a tissue up against her ruined face.
“Mrs. Parker, I know it’s hard now, but I want you to answer me two, maybe three things to get this all started. You concentrate on answering me and helping your baby girl.”
She said nothing.
“Do the initials RGF mean anything to you?”
“No sir.”
“Okay. Now exactly when did she leave and where was she going?”
“It was Tuesday night, four nights ago. She went to church meeting, that’s all. She don’t never come back.”
“You sure she made it?”
“The Reverend say she was there.”
“What kind of meeting was this?”
The woman looked at him, and Earl, who had an instinct for such things, thought he picked up a little something here.
“Just a meeting. You know, Mr. Earl, a church meeting. For the Lord.”
He wrote down, “Meeting? What kind? Who there?”
“Then she left okay?”
“Yes sir. And come on walking home.”
Earl looked down the street. It was but two blocks to the church. Lord, she’d been picked up on this very street!
“Mr. Earl, where is my baby now? She ain’t still there, is she?”
“Yes, ma’am, I’m afraid she is. We have to wait for the detectives to come out from Fort Smith. Seems we had another crime today. A robbery, some folks killed. A bad boy from right around here did the shooting, they say.”
“Lord, Lord,” said the woman.
He was just about to ask her about friends when the Reverend Hairston pulled up in his old car.
“Oh, Sister Lucille,” he keened, “oh, Jesus help us, Jesus help us.”
The Reverend swept toward her and so did four or five large-bosomed, distraught Negro women, and Earl stepped to one side as the mourning began in earnest.
As the full weight of the melancholy fell across him, Earl drove out west of town on Route 8 toward Nunley, where the land was hilly pasturage, green and lovely. This way took him past Boss Harry Etheridge’s summer home, Mountaintop, and the two stone posts that supported the gray wrought-iron gate were testimony to Boss Harry’s importance in the world and how he had risen in Washington in his many terms in the House. Earl could see the road switchbacking its way up the hill to Boss Harry’s compound, which in fact was on the other side of the hill. But all was quiet; Boss Harry had returned to Washington or possibly to his mansion in Fort Smith and there was no sign of habitation on the other side of the fence.
Earl caught up with the news on the radio network: just call-ins from roadblocks but nothing to report, no sightings of Jimmy and Bub.
“Dispatch,” he finally called in, “this is One Four, am ten-seventy-six out to the Pye place in east Polk.”
“Ten-four, Car One Four.”
“Ah, Dispatch, any word yet on when that forensics team going to arrive at my ten-thirty-nine on Route 71?”
“Ah, I think they done finished up there in Fort Smith now and will ten-seventy-seven around six. They a little tired. A busy day.”
“Ain’t that the truth. You call me, Dispatch, if y’all nab Jimmy, ’cause I want to get back to my ten-thirty- nine.”
“Okay, Earl. Good luck.”
“Ten-four and out, Dispatch.”
Nunley was just a few stores and Mike Logan’s sawmill off the road, but beyond it was the Longacre place. He turned left, passed the big house and took a dirt road back through the pastures where the biggest beef cattle herd in West Arkansas grazed, fattening up for the slaughter just four months ahead. The cottage, which Mrs. Longacre had built for her son and daughter-in-law who had died in a car accident in New Orleans and for that reason had never moved into, was a gingerbread romantic fantasy, a mother’s dream of a wonderful site for her beloved son and his wife to live while he was prepared to take over the family properties. But it was not to be.
Now before it was a sheriff’s car and the lady’s Cadillac. A deputy named Buddy Till leaned on the fender.
“Howdy, Earl.”
“Buddy. You’re a little out of your territory, ain’t you?”
“Sheriff thought it’d be a good idee to keep a lookout case Jimmy made it all this way back. If he comes, by God, I’ll be ready.” He jacked a thumb toward his backseat and Earl looked through the glass to recognize his old pal from the war, a Thompson submachine gun. This one wasn’t the military variant, however; it sported a circular
