Breakheart Hill

that.

But that wasn’t what had scared Miss Troy, was it?

No, sir.

What had scared her, Mr. Smathers?

Lyle had. At least that’s what Kelli said.

What did she say exactly?

She said she’d come down to Gadsden to check out what the colored people were doing, but that when Lyle showed up, she’d gotten scared to talk to them.

Did she say anything else?

Yes, she did. She said that she’d felt disappointed in herself because she’d gotten scared off by Lyle, and that she was never going to walk away from anything like that again.

Why do you think she was telling you this?

Well, I thought maybe she was sort of sending a message to

Lyle.

Did you give Lyle that message?

No, sir. I’m not that close with Lyle.

Mr. Bailey had gone on with a few more questions, most of them inconsequential, before turning Eddie over to Mr. Wylie, Lyle’s defense attorney.

Now, Mr. Smathers, can you tell us how long it was after that meeting in Gadsden that you had this conversation with Miss Troy?

About three weeks or so, I guess.

Did Miss Troy say that she’d heard from Lyle Gates since that time?

No, she didn’t.

Or seen him?

No.

Mr. Smathers, did you see anything frightening in the way Lyle Gates behaved toward Miss Troy that night in Gadsden?

No, sir.

In fact, he was pretty friendly to her, wasn’t he?

I guess so.

Did Lyle Gates ever indicate to you that he disliked Miss

Troy?

No.

Did he ever threaten her in your presence?

No.

Then why, Mr. Smathers, do you think he sits here accused of doing such awful things to her?

Eddie gave the only answer he could have. I don’t know.

Nor did he ever know.

And so even now, when I see him here and there around Choctaw, making a deal on the street or glad- handing the congregation at the First Baptist Church, Eddie seems the only person who fell within the circle of what happened on Breakheart Hill who has never felt its cruel touch. When we meet, he smiles brightly, boyishly, asks about Amy and Noreen, then pumps my hand and glides away, happy and oblivious, utterly unstained by the moral darkness that briefly swirled around him. It is as if his own intractable limitedness has worked like a suit of armor, protecting him from the piercing encroachments of a crime in which, though wholly without knowing it, he played a crucial part.

Occasionally, I have imagined confronting Eddie with all he does not know. I have played the scene in my mind endlessly. We meet by accident. He stops to chat with me as he always does. He speaks of sports, the weather, the poor condition of the mountain road. He finally runs out of chatter, starts to leave, grabs my hand.

It is then I draw him to me with a sudden, unsettling tug. Instinctively, he tries to draw away, his eyes perplexed, vaguely frightened by the violence of my grip. But I don’t let him go. I tug him closer to me. My fingers tighten like a noose around his wrist, pulling him nearer and nearer until his ear is at my lips. Then, still clasping him tightly, I whisper: “Don’t you ever wonder why?”

I am sure he never does.

But others do.

I hear them ask that question all the time. Sometimes I hear it rise toward me from the grave, as it does with my father and Shirley Troy, and even Sheriff Stone. Sometimes I hear it from the living, silently, but with an agonizing force, as when, years ago, the small bruised eyes of little Raymond Jeffries first lifted toward me beseechingly from the white sheets of my examining table. I have heard it whispered from behind the dark lenses of Sheila Cameron’s glasses, as well as from the small gray stone that marks her daughter Rosie’s grave.

There have even been occasions when I have risen from my bed, walked out onto my front porch, stared out over the lights of Choctaw and heard nothing but a chorus of low, mournful questions. Why did my husband never love me? Why did my father hate me? Why did my daughter have to die?

I stand mutely, listening to their confused and melancholy whispers. And I know that unless I tell them, they will never know.

PART THREE

CHAPTER 12

ONE SPRING EVENING ONLY A MONTH OR SO BEFORE MISS Troy’s death, Luke and I sat together in the front yard of his house in Turtle Grove. He tapped his pipe on the side of his chair, coughed softly and said, “Our fathers believed that order was the most important thing.”

During the preceding years he had been studying American history, particularly the Puritans, for whom he had developed a special interest as well as a special fondness. He had even acquired the habit of referring to them as “our fathers” in a tone of great reverence. His library was dotted with volumes detailing their physical struggle to carve a world out of the Massachusetts wilderness, but it was their commitment to a moral ideal that most intrigued him, and to which he continually alluded.

I nodded casually at his remark that evening, but my mind was fixed on something else, an old man I’d treated earlier in the day. A tractor had rolled over on him, crushing his left leg, and I’d been struck by how bravely he’d endured what had to have been a very painful examination.

“You know why order was so important to them, Ben?” Luke asked.

I shook my head, barely listening.

“Because our fathers believed that when people did a bad, or, in their words, a ‘disorderly’ thing, it didn’t end with them. It didn’t even end with the people they might have hurt when they did it.” He returned the pipe to his mouth. “It just kept on going down through time.”

Although Luke could not have known it, the remark struck me as bluntly as a hammer. “So when does it end?” I asked pointedly.

Luke shook his head at the appalling truth our fathers had pronounced. “Never,” he replied. “It never ends.”

I pulled my eyes away from him and settled them on a house a few blocks in the distance. It had once been the home of Sheila Cameron, and I could see it very clearly, the stately white facade, the broad green lawn that