“What are you talking about?”
“You got seven kids. You live on scraps, and as your husband said in his valediction, it’s just a matter of time before another tornado hits. This Carpenter guy owns the biggest mansion and most successful bar in the county. Let’s extort the son of a bitch!”
“Extort him with what?”
“That thing in your freezer,” I explained. “We probably got it and they probably want it.”
“How much do you think we can get for it?”
“Floyd asked for fifty thousand dollars. I think we should stick with that. That’ll let them know that we’re picking up where he left off and that if they try killing us, it’ll just keep coming.”
“Then what’s our next move?”
“You live fifteen minutes away from the Blue Suede and have seven kids. The minister is probably keeping an eye on you for them. I don’t think you should do anything. I, on the other hand, live in New York City. This is my last trip to this neck of the woods. I can do what Floyd
tried
to do, only this time I’m going to stick to his original plan.”
“What plan?”
“Instead of approaching that bastard Snake, we go right to his recluse, this John Carpenter guy. I’ll tell him that I know he killed this burglar and show him Polaroids of the man’s hand.”
“Are you going to mention Floyd’s death?”
“No, we don’t have adequate proof that they killed him. Let’s just stick with what we can prove. There is probably a missing person’s report on this guy somewhere. At the very least we can get the hand fingerprinted.”
“Hardly anyone’s ever seen this Carpenter fella,” she said. “How’re you going to find him?”
“The same way Floyd was going to do it. Have you ever gone to this Sing the King ding-a-ling?”
“Just once. But it’s usually mobbed so now I stay away.”
“Floyd’s letter says Carpenter judges it himself. I heard they’re going multicultural this year, so I’ll sign up and hang out there.”
“What if they grab you and torture you until you give them the hand?”
“They didn’t shoot or beat Floyd. They planted a bomb along with incriminating evidence in the toolshed. It was a very careful and patient murder.”
“So why won’t they come after you?”
Violence against journalists was nothing new. Twice I had been attacked on the job. Once a ridiculously corrupt assemblyman whacked me with his cane, which left a red welt on my back. I was able to get him convicted for fourth-degree assault. The second time I was punched in the stomach by an old, fat-ass slumlord who I slugged right back, sending him to the curb with a broken hip. Both times only invigorated me. I sure as hell had never let fear govern my life.
“I’ll just have to convince him that if he does that, the hand will go to the FBI along with a letter prompting an investigation into my death.”
“They killed Floyd,” she repeated.
“Cause he didn’t scare the living shit out of them!” I replied, fueled by Gus’s death. I had gone down this road before.
“Suppose Carpenter goes to the sheriff and
we
get arrested for extortion?” she wisely asked.
“It’s your call, Vinetta. But nothing comes without a fight.”
“Can I sleep on it?” she asked. I told her to go ahead.
She spent the afternoon outside with the kids while I took a nap in the storm cellar. When I awoke, I headed into the house in time to hear her playing her answering machine and murmuring, “Son of a bitch!”
“What’s the matter?”
“Beaucheete just asked me if I wanted to join him for a drink at the B.S. Bastard! Using me like a fool and thinking I’ll just merrily go with him and have a drink with those old farts who killed my Floyd.” She snatched up the phone and said, “I’m going to give that son of a bitch a piece of my mind—”
“Hold on!” I stopped her. “You end things abruptly, they’ll know something’s up. I’m sure they’re keeping tabs on you through him.”
“Shin splints!” She slammed the phone down.
“You almost cursed!” chimed in Floyd Jr. from the living room, “You got to sing Elvis.”
Vinetta ignored him.
“Do you know them?” I asked.
“Who?
“Those barflies who hang out there.”
“You mean that group who make up the band? I know a couple names, but I don’t really know any of them personally.”
“I just keep thinking that they must be Carpenter’s little posse,” I said. “They’ve got to be the ones behind his dirty little tricks.”
“If it’ll help, I can probably go to the bar with Mo and see what I can come up with. I mean, they’ve all seen me in there, so I’m sure I can blend in.”
“If you can get their names I can check them out, but I don’t want you taking any risks or doing anything crazy.”
“It’ll probably take a few nightcaps to casually get all their names. The only problem is I’ll need someone to babysit.”
The idea of handling seven kids at once filled me with a sudden dread I had never known while doing investigative reporting. “I don’t know if I can babysit that many at once.”
“They’re a well-trained group, not nearly as bad as you think. Most of them are fast asleep by eight.”
“All right, if you risk it, so will I,” I said.
She clasped my hand and thanked me profusely for taking up her case. I could see she was touched that someone was finally listening to her.
I didn’t tell her that I wasn’t really doing it for her. I barely knew her, and normally no amount of money would compel me to take a risk like this. I was a reporter, not a private investigator. Although I was grateful for her bailing me out, the boundless guilt from losing Gus tormented me every waking moment. I knew myself well enough to suspect that if I just went back to my homeless, unemployed life, I would hit the bottle until I killed myself. At the very worst, this seemed like a relatively noble—if slightly clownish—way to die.
F
or the next few nights, around eight o’clock, Floyd Jr. and his oldest sister would finish the dishes and help Ma put the younger ones to bed before jumping in themselves. Then Vinetta would tug on a nice dress and head out to the B.S. where she’d meet up with Minister Beaucheete and absorb as much information as she could over a few drinks. During the daylight hours, I drove over to the parking lot of the pub and would set up one of Gus’s cameras with a long lens. Though I was hoping to find the mysterious Mr. Carpenter, I was only able to get photos of the five or so drunks who seemed permanently balanced on barstools inside. At the week’s end, we went into the root cellar and put together a wall of real names and identities, replacing Floyd’s fanciful artwork.
It wasn’t so bad babysitting the kids at night. Slowly they grew on me. One night when I was putting Urleen to bed, she asked me about the shape of my eyes.
“If you want to know whether they hurt,” I anticipated, “the answer is a little, but just along the edges.”
“No, I was just wondering if you can see in small places, like through keyholes and stuff.”
“Oh yeah, I can see through walls. Sometimes if I squint really hard I can see right into a person’s heart.”
“No, but … but do you see things like this.” She pulled open her eyes really wide. “Or do you see like this?” She squeezed them so they were nearly shut.
“I guess I see things the same way you do.”
“Then why are they like that?”
“It’s strange,” I said softly. “People from every part of the world are a little different—different colors, different shapes, different food and languages—and yet when you really get to know them, you find that they are all really pretty much the same.”
She scratched her head and thoughtlessly gave me a kiss, which I happily returned, then closed her eyes.
Slowly the information started coming together. The first target of my investigation was Snake Major. We already knew everything we needed to know about him—a major snake. Next was a tall skeleton named Leo Jones, who farted frequently and referred to them as his “air babies.” Vern Lawrence seemed to think that dogs were leashed to poles as a public service, so that they could be kicked. Irv Packer allegedly had a slew of kids—black, white, brown, and round children scattered all around the county. He didn’t know exactly how many, or where they all were—he probably didn’t even know where they all came from. Finally there was Ernie Dreysdale, who liked heavyset girls, the fatter the better. His supreme sexual fantasy he had confessed to all one night was to have a human she-hippo forklifted down upon his skinny, quivery midsection.
After four anxious evenings of babysitting and reconnaissance, Vinetta’s little investigation came to an abrupt end when the minister drunkenly grabbed at her breasts. She smacked him across the mouth and said it was officially over between them. I was eternally grateful. They had publicly broken up so there would be no suspicions as to why, and my babysitting sentence was over.
The next afternoon I called Blue Suede and told them I wanted to enter their upcoming Sing the King contest.
“Then you best hightail it in here quick, sweet’em,” said the rough male voice on the phone, “cause deadline’s in three days.”
“I’ll do just that.”
“And I hope you have somewhere to stay cause every hotel and motel in the county’s been booked for months.”
“I took care of that,” I replied. “I just need to know exactly what I have to prepare for.”
He explained that I had to pay a twenty-five-dollar entry fee that was nonrefundable. In addition to providing my own costume, the format involved singing one Elvis hit for the preliminaries. If I made it through that stage, I had to sing about fifteen minutes of Elvis for the finale—usually three songs. The odds that I was going to memorize and learn three Elvis tunes better than anyone else in the contest seemed highly unlikely. But I only had to be there long enough to get a lay of the land and find this Carpenter fellow. Additionally, I had the slight advantage that the judges this year were looking for multicultural Elvises.
“You’re also permitted to make some ad hoc Elvis-like remarks,” he added, “but you can’t use profanities, or say anything controversial. That’s an automatic disqualification.”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
“Well, we had an Extreme Elvis in the past who flashed the audience, and this year the contest is being filmed for several local TV channels,” he said proudly.
“Which ones?” I had no desire for any more publicity than absolutely necessary.
“Channel 37 in Nashville, Channel 28 in Memphis, and Channel 22 in Chattanooga.”
My call waiting pinged, so I thanked him and took it. It was the Murphy County morgue informing me that I could claim the body of Gustavo Benoit as well as his death certificate. I explained that I would not be able to collect the body for a few days. They explained that I had one week before he would be buried in a county field—very nice, considering they killed him.
His sister Clementina had specifically asked if I would handle burial. The only problem was, having started out broke, I was now
very
broke, living on new credit card debt paying off old credit card debt. Since I knew many of the upper-management people Gus had worked for as a journalist and I was not too proud, I spent the next day inviting them all down to the funeral, knowing full well that none of them would travel to a small town in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately, money alleviated their guilt. After calling and e-mailing about half a dozen of his more successful friends, I half-begged, half-borrowed more than enough—about five grand—for the Gustavo Funeral Fund.
Again Vinetta came to my rescue with ground support. In addition to poor Floyd, she had buried a slew of relatives, so she personally contacted a small funeral parlor run by a distant cousin. For thirty-three hundred, they organized a cheap, tasteful funeral, and the director knew of a bargain plot of land nearby. In fact, it was located in my mom’s hometown of Mesopotamia. Apparently, a field that had once been the site of a minor civil war skirmish had recently been redesignated as Patriot Hills Cemetery, and bodies were just pouring in. After making the arrangements, I called Clementina and asked if she would be coming down for his funeral in two days.
“Tell me where and I’ll be there,” she said stoically.
Two mornings later, Clementina arrived on a Greyhound bus. When I picked her up at the station, I was surprised to see that she had brought along her two beautiful teenage daughters. She explained that though they could spend the night if necessary, there was a bus returning at seven. I assured her that I’d have them on it.
I put their bags in the trunk and drove them down to the funeral parlor, where the girls sat before his open coffin. Clementina took out a photograph of her son Earl, proud in his uniform, and slipped it alongside Gustavo’s little pillow, then kissed him on the pancaked makeup covering his swollen cheeks. After a quick service from a local African American minister, they closed his lid forever. A group from the parlor carried his budget coffin to an awaiting hearse. Clementina and her girls joined me in my car and we began the small procession. Vinetta and her kids, all in their Sunday best, followed in her truck. Together we returned poor Gustavo to the earth from where we are all on loan. Clementina and I wept. Afterward Vinetta led us to Somerville’s, the nicest little restaurant in the area, and we all got early-bird specials. Vinetta’s children settled down and she politely asked Clementina about Gustavo, what made him the man he was. Clementina recounted a few ancient memories of growing up together in the turbulent 1960s when the old South was still casting off the last vestiges of its antebellum past.
“I firmly believe that seeing all those sit-ins and marches and freedom rides compelled him to serve as a witness for all injustices. And journalism was the best place to testify.”
After I paid for the dinner, Vinetta and her kids went home. I brought Clementina and her two quiet girls back to the bus stop. Before leaving them, I offered Clementina her brother’s belongings that he had left in my car. She only took a few personal effects.
“If you could donate his clothes to Goodwill I’d appreciate it.” I handed her his expensive suitcase of photographic gear. “I’m sure Gus would want you to have that,” she said, “to report the truth.” I didn’t have the heart to say that tabloid journalism was frequently the opposite of truth.