“Lord, I’d know that voice anywhere,” she said brightly, turning. “I haven’t heard it in forty long years but I hear it every night before I go to bed. He was a wonderful man, your father. Do you know that, Bob Lee? Most men are not wonderful, it has been my experience to learn, but your father truly was.”
“Yes, ma’am. I wish I remembered him better.”
“Did you ever marry, Bob Lee? And have children?”
“Yes, ma’am, finally. I met a fine woman, a nurse on an Indian reservation in Arizona. I look after horses now. We have a daughter named Nicole, Nicki. She’s four. We love her a great deal.”
“I’m happy. Earl deserved a grandchild. I wish he could have known.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Bob. “Ma’am, I’m here with an associate, a young writer. His name is Russ Pewtie.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Longacre,” said Russ.
“Here, take my hand, young man. I want to steal some warmth from you.”
Russ put his hand out and she seized it fiercely, her fingers cold but still tight with strength.
“There. Now, Russ, you describe for me what is before me, please. I insist. I want to borrow your eyes. I’m told it is beautiful, but I have no way of knowing.”
Russ bumbled through a description of the scene, feeling less than articulate.
But she was kind.
“You speak well,” she said.
“He’s a writer,” Bob said.
“What is he writing? Is he writing your life story, Bob Lee? That would be an exciting book.”
“No, ma’am. He is writing a book about my father and how he died.”
“A terrible tragedy,” said Miss Connie. “A terrible day. Worse than any day in the war. Worse in some ways than the day my son and his wife died. My son was a drunk. If you drink and drive in fast little cars, you must face certain consequences. So be it. But your father was doing a job important to the community and setting a moral example. He deserved so much better than a guttersnipe like Jimmy Pye.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Bob. “We came to talk about that. About what happened that day. What was said, the timing of it, what you remember. Is that all right, Miss Connie?”
“May I ask why?”
“I just want to know how my father died,” Bob said.
“Any son’s right. Go ahead. Ask away.”
“You saw him?”
“Yes, I did. He arrived at the cottage at about two. He made an awful deputy who was hanging around go away. Most men did what Earl told them; he had that way. But Earl was upset. He didn’t show it, because your father was a man in control. He didn’t say much, he did a lot. He was a still man, a watcher. When he spoke he had such a deep and raspy voice, just like yours. But he was bothered by Jimmy. He could not understand it. He
“Why was that, do you suppose?” Russ asked.
“I look at the two of them, Jimmy Pye and Earl Swagger, and I see the two Americas. Earl was the old America, the America that won the war. When I say ‘the war,’ young man, of course I mean World War II.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“With young people today, you can never be sure what they know. Anyway, Earl was sturdy, patient, hardworking, stubborn, very courageous. Jimmy was the new America. He knew nothing. But he was handsome, slick, clever, cute, and evil. He only cared for himself. His theory of the world put him at the center of it, that was all. He never cared even for Edie White except to have her and say to the world, no one else can have this beautiful thing. She was a lovely, lovely girl. Earl would not allow himself to face the truth about Jimmy. That was his flaw, his hubris. That’s why it’s tragedy, not melodrama.”
“Did my father—what was he working on those last few days? Was there an investigation, a project? I have to know what he was thinking.”
“I was only with him for a half an hour that last day, maybe less. Then I left and he and Edie were alone. I never saw him again; by the time I got back, she was sleeping. But … I do remember this. He had found a body that day, earlier.”
“The young black girl,” said Russ. “Yes, we’ve heard of that.”
“Shirelle Parker, her name was. She was murdered. Your father was very troubled by the event. I could see him turning it over. I remember exactly what it was. He said he thought there were signs of ‘monkey business.’ What those were, he never elaborated.”
“But from what I understand, there was no monkey business,” Bob said. “A black youth was arrested the next day or two. Sam prosecuted. It was open-and-shut. The boy was executed two years later. That was all there was to it.”
“Yes,” said Miss Connie. “All there was to it.”
“So my father was wrong,” said Bob.
She turned and set her face outward, as if she were looking across the bay.
Then she turned back to face them.
“Your father was right. Reggie Gerard Fuller didn’t kill her. I found that out many years later.”
“Who did?”
“I don’t know. But I do know what happened and why it happened. The night that girl disappeared there was a meeting at the church.”
Russ remembered a note inside the notebook that Earl Swagger had left behind. “Meeting—who there?”
“In those days, the South was being prepared for the civil rights movement, which no matter what you might think, did not spring out of nowhere. For a decade, very brave young black ministers and young white volunteers traveled from church to church, where they tried to prepare the people for the dangerous work ahead. The night that Shirelle disappeared, there had been such a meeting at the church. Shirelle was at the meeting. So was Reggie. After the meeting, he drove people home in his father’s hearse, people all over Polk, Scott and Montgomery counties.
“I don’t—”
“The white man was a Jewish radical from New York. His name was Saul Fine. I believe he was a communist. He was later killed in Mississippi. He was taken out and shot by some young white men who called him a nigger lover. That night, he gave an impassioned speech to some of the younger people that the reverend believed in. Then they went home and Saul moved on. But when Shirelle was found, and Reggie was accused, he must have decided that if he told about the meeting, there’d be consequences. It would get out that a revolution was being planned, that a communist northern agitator was down South stirring up the colored. White people would get upset, there’d be violence against the church, the whole thing would come apart. The Klan would ride again. White people were very frightened in those days, I recall.”
She looked out and took off her glasses. Her eyes were still blue though now sightless and opaque. A tear ran down them.
“Your father was a brave, brave man, Bob Lee Swagger. He won the Medal of Honor and he never spoke of it to a soul. But he wasn’t the bravest man I ever heard of. The bravest man I ever heard of was a nineteen-year-old Negro boy who sat still in the electric chair while they strapped him in, and then they killed him and he never made a peep. Because he believed in something. He didn’t get any medals or glory. He never went to meet the President. He understood there were consequences to everything, and he faced them squarely and followed them where they led him. That’s what Saul Fine had told them: People will have to die. The Struggle will cost in blood. Nobody will remember those who die. It is the simple, brutal process of progress.”
She paused. “Nobody ever knew, except the people at that meeting and they couldn’t tell. His mother didn’t know, his father didn’t know and not even many of the blacks in Blue Eye knew. Sam never knew. Sam prosecuted him and believed he was doing God’s work. I believed justice was served. When I found out—this was in 1978, when I met George Tredwell, he was the black minister who traveled with Saul Fine in those days—I almost called Sam. But then I thought: What’s the point? It would kill Sam to find out he’d made such a tragic mistake. So that was the only gift I ever gave Sam, as much as I loved him.”
“It can’t hurt him now. Sam died night before last.”
“I thought I heard death in your voice.”
