Betty. Tanny said Detective Wilcox would be bringing you around this morning. You're doing a story about Ferguson, we know. My husband's here, please, we would like to talk with you.'
Her voice had an easygoing pleasantness to it that failed to conceal her anxiety. She clipped off her words carefully, he thought, because she doesn't want to lose them to emotion quite yet. He followed the woman into the house, thinking: But she will.
The murdered girl's mother led Cowart down a small hallway and into the living room. He was aware that Wilcox was trailing behind, but he ignored him. A bulky, large-bellied, balding man rose from a reclining chair when he entered the room. The man struggled for a moment to push himself out of the seat, then stepped forward to shake Cowart's hand. 'I'm George Shriver, he said. 'I'm glad we had this opportunity.'
Cowart nodded and quickly glanced around, trying to lock details to his memory. The room, like the exterior, was trim and modern. The furniture was simple, colorful prints were hung on the walls. It had a cozy haphazardness to it, as if each item in the room had been purchased independently from the others, solely because it was admired, not necessarily because it could match up with anything else. The overall impression was slightly disjointed but exceptionally comfortable. One wall was devoted to family photos, and Cowart's eyes fell on them. The same photograph of Joanie he'd seen at school hung in the center of the wall, surrounded by other shots. He noted an older brother and sister, and the usual family portraits.
George Shriver followed his eyes. 'The two older kids, George Junior and Anne, are away at school. They're both at the University of Florida. They probably would have wanted to be here,' he said.
'Joanie was the baby,' said Betty Shriver. 'She'd have been getting ready for high school.' The woman caught her breath suddenly, her lip quivering. Cowart saw her struggle and turn away from the photographs. Her husband reached out a huge, chunky hand and gently steered her over to the couch, where she-sat down. She immediately rose, asking, 'Mr. Cowart, please, where are my manners? Can I get you something to drink?'
'Ice water would be nice,' Cowart replied, turning away from the photographs and standing next to an armchair. The woman disappeared for a moment. Cowart asked George Shriver an innocuous question, something to dispel the pall that had fallen over the room.
'You're a city councilman?'
'Ex,' he replied. 'Now I just spend my time down at the store. I own a couple of hardware stores, one here in Pachoula, another down on the way to Pensacola. Keeps me busy. Especially right now, waiting on the spring.'
He paused, then continued. 'Ex-councilman. Used to be I was interested in all that, but I kinda fell out of it when Joanie was taken from us, and we spent so much time with the trial and all, and it just sort of slipped away, and I never got back into it again. That happened a lot. If'n we hadn't had the others, George Junior and Anne, I suspect we would have just stopped. I don't know what might have happened to us.'
Mrs. Shriver returned and handed Cowart a glass of ice water. He saw that she had taken a moment to compose herself.
'I'm sorry if this is difficult for you,' he said.
'No. Rather speak our feelings than hide them,' replied George Shriver. He sat down on the couch next to his wife, throwing his arm around her. 'You don't never lose the pain,' he said. 'It maybe gets a bit duller, you know, like it's not so sharp so it's pricking at you all the time. But little things bring it back. I'll just be sitting in the chair, and I'll hear some neighbor's child's voice, way outside, and for just an instant, I'll think it's her. And that hurts, Mr. Cowart. That's real pain. Or maybe I'll come down here in the morning to fix myself coffee, and I'll sit here staring at those pictures, just like you did. And all I can think of is that it didn't happen, no sir, that she's gonna come bouncing out of her room, just like she always did, all morning sunshine and happiness and ready to jump right into the day, sir, because that's the sort of child she was. Just all golden.'
The big man's eyes had filled with tears as he spoke, but his voice had remained steady.
'I go to church a bit more than I used to; it's a comfort. And the damnedest things, Mr. Cowart, will just make me hurt. I saw a special on television a year ago about the children starving in Ethiopia. Man, that's all the way on the other side of the world and, hell, I ain't ever been anywhere except North Florida, save for the army. But now, I been sending the relief organizations money every month. A hundred here, a hundred there. I couldn't stand it, you know, thinking that some babies were gonna die just because they couldn't eat. I hated it. I thought how much I loved my baby, and she was stolen from me. So, I guess I did it for her. I must be crazy. I'll be in the store, working on the receipts, and it'll start to get late, and I'll remember some time that I stayed to work late and missed dinner with the kids and got home late so they were all asleep, especially my baby, and I'd go in and see her laying there. And I would hate that memory because I missed one of her laughs, or one of her smiles, and there were so few of them, they were precious, sir. Like little diamonds.'
George Shriver leaned his head back, staring into the ceiling. He was breathing hard, sweating profusely, his white shirt rising and falling as he fought for breath and struggled with memories.
His wife had grown quiet, but her eyes had reddened and her hands shook in her lap. 'We ain't special people, Mr. Cowart,' she said slowly. 'George's worked hard and made something of hisself, so that the kids would have it easier. George Junior is going to be an engineer. Anne is a whizbang at chemistry and the sciences. She's got a chance to go on to medical school.' The woman's eyes glistened with a sudden pride. 'Can you imagine that? A doctor from our family. We've just worked hard so that they could be something better, you know.'
'Tell me,' Cowart said carefully, 'what you think about Robert Earl Ferguson.'
There was a solid loud quiet while they collected their thoughts. He saw Betty Shriver take a deep breath before answering.
'It's a hate that goes way beyond hate,' she said. 'It's an awful, unchristian anger, Mr. Cowart. It's just a terrible black rage inside that never goes away.'
George Shriver shook his head. 'There was a time when I would have killed him myself, just so easy, I wouldn't of thought about it no more than you would if you slapped a mosquito off'n your arm. I don't know if that's true for me anymore. You know, Mr. Cowart, this is a conservative community here. People go to church. Salute the flag. Say grace before they eat and vote Republican now that the Democrats have forgotten what they're all about. I think if you were to grab ten folks off the street, they'd say, No, don't give that boy the electric chair; send him back here and let us take care of him. Fifty years ago, he'd a been lynched. Hell, less than fifty. Things have changed, I think. But the longer it all goes on, the longer I think that it was us that got sentenced, not just him. Months pass. Years pass. He's got all these lawyers working for him, and we find out about another appeal, another hearing, another something, and it brings it all back. We don't ever get the chance to put it all behind us. Not that you can, mind you. But at least you ought to get the chance to put it someplace and get on with what's left of your life, even if it is all sick and wrong now.'
He sighed and shook his head. 'It's like we're living in a kinda prison right alongside him.'
After a few seconds, Cowart asked, 'But you know what I'm doing?'
'Yes, sir,' both husband and wife replied in unison.
'Tell me what you know,' he asked.
Betty Shriver leaned forward. 'We know that you're looking at the case. See if there wasn't some unfairness connected to it. Right?'
'That's about as close as you could guess.'
'What do you think was unfair?' George Shriver asked. This was spoken mildly, curiously, not angrily.
'Well, that was my question for you. What do you think about what happened in the trial?'
'I think the sonuvabitch got convicted, that's what… ' he responded, his voice rising quickly. But his wife put her hand on his leg and he seemed visibly to slow himself.
'We sat through it all, Mr. Cowart,' Betty Shriver said. 'Every minute. We saw him sitting there. You could see a sort of fear in his eyes, sir, a sort of desperate anger at everyone as it all happened. I'm told he hated Pachoula, and that he hated all the folks here, black and white, just the same. You could see that
