“Enough to draw any conclusions?”
He paused to light a cigarette and moved around to the other side so the breeze could carry his smoke away from me. (Ed’s more of a gentleman than he likes to admit.)
“You mean did the dog find accelerant and track the gas can back to the Amoco station where the bad guy bought five gallons with his own charge card? No.”
“But you did find gasoline residue?”
“Well, Sparky was wagging his tail like it was gas and it smelled like gas to me, too, but we’ll have to wait and run it through the lab first.” He took a deep drag and exhaled twin jets of smoke through his nostrils. “Tell me about your nephew and his little friends.”
“A.K.’s not part of this,” I said. “He hasn’t been out from under his parents’ noses since last weekend.”
“You sure about that?”
“A.K. might lie to my daddy, but Andrew and April never would.”
Ed grinned. He knows the legends some of his older revenuer friends have told about Daddy. “Then tell me about his friends.”
Again I shook my head. “I really don’t know them. I heard that the Starling boy’s family used to own the land that the church stood on, but that was back probably before he was even born. As for Raymond Bagwell, all I know is that one of my old high school teachers thinks he’s a fine young man that Starling’s led astray.”
With the edge of his boot, Ed scraped out a small hole, dropped his cigarette butt into it, then tamped the dirt back over it. “You get a good look at the words painted on the church wall?”
“Pretty good. And before you ask, yes, it looked like the same color green paint and I suppose they could’ve been lettered by one of those boys. Can’t you compare the two?”
He shook his head. “There’s not enough on that videotape to go to court with. All we’ve got’s part of a KKK and a swastika. Your brother alibis your nephew, Bagwell and Starling alibi each other—any fifty-dollar lawyer could argue that the angle distorts the letters or that the paint is black, not green. If there’d been even a smear left, we could’ve tried matching it to what I hear was used in the cemetery.”
I told him about the one pew burning in the middle of the church, well away from the primary fire and he rolled his eyes scornfully. “Amateurs.”
We’d reached the end of the main path. From here, it dwindled into a true hiking trail, one person wide, through a tangle of briars, trumpet vines, birches and wax myrtles.
As we turned to go back, Ed said, “Any of your kinfolks on the volunteer fire department?”
“No,” I said. “Why?”
“I was thinking that if they were, they might have noticed something and mentioned it to you.”
“You kidding? All those guys were noticing last night was how quick they could get water on the fire and how much they could save. They were running on adrenaline,” I said and told him about the way the Turner boy had hoisted that big wooden pulpit as if it were no heavier than a toothpick. “I doubt they were looking for clues first thing.”
“Turner?” asked Ed. “Donny Turner?”
“You know him?”
“I’ve heard of him,” he answered slowly. “Big guy? Never misses a call-out?”
“Big, yes,” I said. “But you’d have to ask somebody else about his dedication. He certainly seemed to have his heart in it last night. Not to mention his back.”
Abruptly changing the subject, Ed said, “You sit in a courtroom every day. See much racially motivated stuff?”
“An occasional barroom brawl.” I answered promptly. “And sometimes a high school scuffle will get out of hand. Or someone will file a civil suit claiming they were either fired or not hired because of race.”
I thought about the people I’d gone to high school with, both white and black. Most of them married now, most of them with children of their own and settled into some sort of nine-to-five job. Most of them decent human beings.
Most of them. Not all.
There are very few of us who don’t have bits and pieces of covert racism embedded in our psyches. Things that pop out when we aren’t expecting it, the “what else can you expect from a [insert ethnic or racist epithet of choice]?” Things we’re usually too ashamed to express, the very things we act superior about when our nearest and dearest do express them.
“We’re probably always going to have rednecks who don’t have anything but their white skins to feel superior about and shiftless blacks who think they’re totally entitled because their ancestors were once slaves. For the most part though, whatever their bedrock feelings may be, I think most people around here try to keep a civil tongue and get on with their own business.”
Ed lit another cigarette as I searched for the right words.
“I guess what I’m saying is that I’ve never felt we were so polarized here in Colleton County that we’d have hate burnings like last night. You’re going to find it was a kid acting out, doing it more for kicks than for hatred. You just wait and see. I’m sure you are.”
I didn’t realize I was getting so vehement till Ed held up his hands in surrender. “Hey, you don’t have to convince me. One thing though: this volunteer fire department. Any blacks on it?”
“You saying you don’t think they came out as fast as they would’ve for a white church?” I snapped.
“Don’t be so touchy. I’m just trying to see the big picture here.”
