“Our esteemed governor, talking about campaign contributions from Hoyt and Jimmie.”
“You want to go to the newspaper boys with this one?”
“I think I want to keep this one in my back pocket,” Britton said, giving a sharp smile. “But there is one thing.”
I brushed the dirt off the front of my work pants.
“A woman in my church told me about this man,” he said. “He was on Fifth Avenue when Mr. Patterson was killed.”
THE MAN LIVED LESS THAN TWO MILES AWAY FROM MY land in a little cottage on Sandfort Road. I drove, following the twisting road cutting through the red bluffs of the Chattahoochee, and finally found the address and the small gravel drive. But when we knocked on the door, we were met with the sliver of a face behind the chain asking what the hell we wanted. Britton told the man we were with the Russell County Betterment Association and said he’d like to talk to him about Mr. Patterson. He didn’t mention the name of the woman from the church.
The man stood there for a few moments.
“I don’t know why you’d want to talk to me.”
“Were you on Fifth Avenue when Mr. Patterson was shot?” I asked.
There was silence and then: “No. You are mistaken.”
“Some people saw you there,” Britton said, in his smooth country drawl. “Said you had dinner at the Elite.”
“They were mistaken.”
“You weren’t there?” Britton asked.
“I said they were mistaken. Now leave me be.”
“Sir, if you’re afraid,” Britton said, “you don’t need to be. The National Guard troops are on every street corner. We could get you help.”
Fingers reached into the crack, like small pink worms, and unlatched the chain lock. The door swung open and we walked inside. The room was empty save for two chairs and a suitcase.
“Going somewhere?” I asked.
“Far from here, if people don’t quit running their goddamn mouths.”
“We can help you, sir,” Britton said, putting his hands in his pockets and shifting back on his heels. “Unless we speak out, they’ll go free and the city will fall right back into that hellhole.”
“Speak out?” the man asked as he walked toward Britton and stopped. He was pudgy and wearing a dirty white T-shirt. “My wife and daughter are gone. I put them on a bus two days after the killing. It wouldn’t stop. The phone wouldn’t stop ringing. I had to take the phone off the hook and sit up for two days straight drinking coffee with a shotgun on my lap, sitting out there on that porch, my heart up my throat every time a car passed on by slow or I saw the police. Do you understand? This is none of my concern.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Things are different now.”
The man laughed, it was a harsh little laugh out his nose, like he hadn’t intended it. “Last time I checked, the same sonsabitches still hold badges.”
“What exactly did you see?” Britton asked, keeping his tone even and slow. He looked to me and then back. “Sir?”
“Please leave.”
I watched the man, saw the arms hug himself, the sweating brow, the pacing, eyes reddened and twitching. I looked to Hugh Britton and then touched the older man’s shoulder: “Come on.”
ARCH FERRELL SAT AT THE EDGE OF HIS FOREST IN A METAL lawn chair watching the sun set and drinking bourbon from the bottle. His fingers had grown yellow from the nicotine of the endless cigarettes, and he wore the same suit of clothes he’d had on for two days, his own smell sickening him. When the phone rang inside his house it was a distant thing and he paid it no mind as the sun crisply broke through the perfectly laid acres of pines that his daddy had planted before the war. Simple and straight, a lush curtain of rust-colored needles on the ground.
His wife, Madeline, seven months pregnant and waddling, came out and called to him from the ranch house they owned in Seale, ten miles from Phenix City. He heard her but didn’t, and for a while just kept concentrating on the light, the shifting of shadows pouring like ink from the trunks on the blanket of needles.
She called to him again, and he felt for the arms of the chair, pulling himself up. For a moment, he blinked, thinking he spotted a German soldier in the depths of his acreage. He saw nothing but heard the explosive thud of artillery and the
The walk was endless, and he made himself count the steps, maybe a hundred feet, and she pulled the black phone out on a long cord and handed it to him by their backyard grill and he answered, hearing his voice more in his head than outside his body.
“Arch?”
“Si?”
“Listen, I want you to hear me and hear me good.”
“I’ll certainly try.”
“I’m gone.”
“What do you mean ‘gone’?”
“I just left the courthouse and I’ve fully packed. I have a car waiting on me.”
“Where?”
“Where no one on earth can find me, I assure you of that.”
“You’re not going to testify,” Arch said. The words came out slurred and long.
“I did,” Garrett said. “For ten hours straight. They have me and they have you.”
“Come again?” Arch asked, stepping backward on the patio, nearly tripping, and holding himself level only by the strength of the phone cord in his hand.
“Reid made a statement. He gave all of it. They had some kind of jew detective named Goldstein check out his stories. The grand jury knows about us at the Molton Hotel and changing those vote tallies. You hear me? Reid told it all.”
“Goddamn all to hell.”
“Don’t panic. I’ll be in touch.”
“Where? What do I do?”
“I’ll be in touch. I gave my briefcase over to my secretary and the papers on Patterson to my chief investigator. Everyone knows we were on the phone together, buddy. You can’t argue with the facts.”
“Si? You said you could handle this. You said you could stop any investigation. Si?”
The phone clicked and clicked, and an operator came on the line asking if Arch needed assistance and he told the woman yes, to please go fuck herself, and the woman gave a little yelp. Arch walked back to the chair and the bottle and the ramrod-straight rows of pines. Acres and acres.
Madeline was there, stomach about to pop, and a gentle, assuring smile on her face. He walked to her and she pulled Arch in. He smelled her neck that was all good things, flowers and biscuits, and wrapped his arms around her, crying low and hard, the night coming on, filling the trees in an endless lake of shadows.
“I need to know,” she said.
He hugged her, burying his head into her neck, just holding her. They stayed there until she nudged him; he’d drifted off and was on the chair again. She stood behind, and he could feel the weight of their unborn child pressing against his neck.
“I need to know.”
He coughed and leaned forward, finding the bottle that had rolled under the metal chair. He uncorked it and took a drink, cleansing his mouth with the taste.
“No,” he said, throat cracked and raw. “I wasn’t anywhere near Albert Patterson. I was on the phone to Si. But now Si has up and lost his mind again. A coward, a fearful coward.”
Madeline rubbed the top of Arch’s head and placed the cool back of her hand against his forehead as if
