South Of Hell

criminals, cops, and sometimes just ordinary men with not so ordinary secrets. Shockey seemed to hold something of all three.

“I met Jean when I was in high school,” he said. “Her family was real strict, and she didn’t get to go out much. But she made it to a church party one night, and I found her just sitting in the corner.”

“When was this?” Joe asked.

“My senior year,” Shockey said. “It was right after the last football game of the year. Anyway, I liked her right off. I mean, I didn’t have much, with my dad being on disability and all, but she had less.”

“Was she a farm girl?” Louis asked.

“Yeah,” Shockey said. “Her mother was this holy roller who put the fear of God in her about boys and sex and all that shit. I think her father might have beat her. She never said for sure, but Jean was always talking about wanting to get away from them.”

Shockey drew a slow breath.

“We started seeing each other, meeting secretly when she could get out of the house. I couldn’t help it, I loved her, and I wanted her so bad. We started…” His voice trailed off as he closed his eyes. “At the end of summer, I had to leave to go to football camp. We had plans. I mean, I wanted to come back and marry her, get us both somewhere better. But when I busted up my knee, I couldn’t face anyone, and, well, I finally stopped writing to her.”

Shockey shook his head. “When I finally worked up the guts to go to her place, her mother told me Jean had moved away. Wouldn’t tell me where. Just slammed the door in my face.”

“Jean never told you she was pregnant?” Joe asked.

Shockey shook his head. “She wouldn’t have,” he said. “We talked a lot about not being the kind of people our parents were, always having to scrape for every dollar. We talked a lot about me needing to make something of myself before we could get married. I was supposed to go to college. That’s what Jean wanted for me — for us. That was our ticket out.”

Louis was quiet, some of this sounding too familiar.

“Nine years,” Shockey whispered. “I should have…” His voice trailed off as he rose and went to the window.

Louis watched Shockey’s broad back, hoping the man wasn’t going to break down right here. Not with Amy in the next room.

“So now what?” Joe asked.

Shockey turned to look at her.

“Are you thinking of trying to prove this to a judge and taking custody of Amy?”

Shockey ran a hand over his eyes. “Why not?”

“It’s going to be hard to prove, Jake,” Louis said. “You know a blood test can’t prove you’re her father. It can only prove you’re not. And besides, you’d need Jean’s blood type-”

“I have it,” Shockey said. “We got blood tests to get married. And I have a few pictures, and maybe I can find someone who remembers we were together back then.”

Joe suddenly stood up and walked a small circle around the living room. “Jake, listen,” she said. “I appreciate your good intentions here, but I don’t think a judge is going to find you much more fit than Owen Brandt.”

“If Amy is mine, she belongs with me,” Shockey said.

“It doesn’t work like that, Jake,” Louis said.

“But what are our options?” Shockey asked. “Some foster home?”

“Do you hear yourself?” Joe asked. “My God, up until today, you still called her ‘the girl.’ You haven’t established any kind of bond with her. And she doesn’t feel anything special toward you.”

“That will come,” Shockey said. “It’s a natural thing, and it’ll come. She’s Jean’s daughter. She’s my daughter. I can do this. I know I can.”

“Sorry, Jake, I can’t let you do it,” Joe said.

“You can’t stop me,” he said.

“As her temporary guardian, I can,” Joe said. “Unless you can prove you’re her father, no judge is ever going to let you have her. And I won’t just sit back and let you disrupt her life all over again. At least, not yet. Not until you clean up your act and find a decent place to live and get a new job.”

Shockey rose slowly to his feet. “She’s my daughter,” he said. “You have no right to keep her from me.”

“Don’t try to fight me on this, Jake. You won’t win.”

Shockey stared her at disbelief.

Joe grabbed her jacket off the chair. “I need some air.” She looked at Louis. “Keep an eye on Amy.”

When the door closed behind her, Shockey sank slowly back into the chair. The room was quiet, and for a long time, they just sat there. Shockey stared at his folded hands. Louis finished his beer and set the bottle gently on the coffee table.

“You’ve got to talk to her for me, Kincaid,” Shockey said. “You’ve got to get her to understand that Amy belongs with family.”

“No,” Louis said.

“But I don’t understand,” Shockey said. “That woman doesn’t have a maternal bone in her body. Why is she doing this to me?”

“You did it to yourself, Jake,” Louis said. “You don’t fix what you did sixteen years ago with a blood test now.”

“Just heap some more shit on me, why don’t you?” Shockey said. “You think I don’t feel lousy enough?”

Louis sank back on the cushions, thinking about his lunch with Lily tomorrow.

“Feeling lousy is the easy part,” he said.

Chapter Twenty-seven

The cops had left the barn a mess. Crime-scene tape hung from the stalls and across the door. Evidence markers littered the dirt. And no one had filled in the hole where the bones of that woman had been found.

Owen Brandt stared and grunted.

They could at least have done that. Filled in the damn hole. Who wanted to look into an open grave? Who wanted an open grave on their property, like death was just waiting for them?

“I’m cold,” Margi said. “Why can’t we go back to the house?”

“Shut up. I’m thinking,” Brandt said without looking at her.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Me and that,” he said, pointing to the hole.

“What do you care about some dead black woman?” Margi asked. “What does she have to do with you?”

Brandt moved away from her, closer to the hole.

What do those nigger bones have to do with me? The question was eating at him, and he wasn’t sure he wanted even to think about this. He hadn’t thought about it since he was thirteen, hadn’t thought about it for one second since that day Geneva had said it.

You know, we got colored blood in us, Owen. Ma told me once our great-great-great-grandma was colored.

That ain’t true.

Is too.

Is not. I’m no nigger.

He didn’t believe her, didn’t want to believe her, because Geneva was always making up stuff to get him mad. But it had stayed there in his head nevertheless.

“Come on,” Brandt said. “We’re taking a walk.”

He went out the barn door and headed north, across the cornfield. Margi trailed along behind him.

He hadn’t been out to the cemetery since he was a kid, but he could still remember where it was. His old man had always made a big deal about coming out here when the lilac bushes were in bloom so they could lay