It’s been two years since someone took the life of a talented man and a beautiful young lady. Still, no one has been found guilty by those who call themselves our police. To those who’ve had previous experience with our local guard, they will recognize the apathy. But as one who knew Eddie Porter as few did – I was his pastor and the first to hire him to play organ in our little church – I’m enraged that perhaps the problem lies even further from police and into our own community.
Porter’s supposed “friend,” soul shouter Clyde James, was home at the time of the attack. Still, Mr. James told police he didn’t see anything. Both his wife, who I’m told was carrying his child, and Porter were killed by gunfire. How does a man not hear gunfire in a quiet neighborhood on Rosewood Avenue? How does one not hear violence in one’s own home?
I wanted to ask these questions myself to Mr. James, but it seems nobody can find the superstar. It seems that he’s been going from bar to bar leaving reality far behind. I’ve even heard rumors of drugs.
If you read this, Mr. James, stand up. Tell what you know to Mr. Wagner and the police.
I’m told on good authority that at first Mr. James claimed he saw two white men leave his house and drive away in a station wagon. Now it seems that he’s changed his story.
Stand up, Mr. James. Stand up.
The story was written by a local preacher by the name of O. T. Jones and was followed by an advertisement for his Sunday sermon. A black-and-white rainbow had been crudely drawn over a church steeple. The motto read: THE FREEDOM TRAIN NEVER STOPS.
“He killed them, didn’t he?” Abby asked.
“You know, I don’t care. All this shit is telling us is maybe why he split. But I’m just trying to find him. If I were profiling him, I’d probably go back to Memphis and see if I could take a look at the Eddie Porter murder file. Tracker lesson number one: Use your public record.”
Abby was tearing the corners off a yellow sheet of paper. In my rush to make the most of a side trip from Memphis, I’d forgotten what this girl had been through. Her parents had been killed and I was sitting around discussing another pretty nasty murder like it was an old movie. I felt like a complete asshole.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“For what?”
“We need to go.”
I returned the records and clips to the librarian and watched her as she walked to the caged doors and locked away Clyde’s legacy. I looked up at the walls covered in old juke house posters and concert bills. Howlin’ Wolf. Little Milton. Even a musical festival in Memphis with a big picture of soul legend Rufus Thomas eating a hotdog bun loaded with a harmonica.
“My daddy never let me listen to this kind of music,” she said as we walked down a wide staircase, almost as if she were talking to herself.
I asked her why.
“Said it was an embarrassment to our state.”
“What do you think?” I asked.
She seemed surprised by the question.
Chapter 24
As we walked under a tunnel of cedar trees, purple shadows dripped over the tin roof of the stables where Abby’s cousin, Maggie, worked. Abby scooted ahead in a brisk walk, but I lagged behind, watching a magnolia leaf fall in spindly patterns. The air was heavy with dust still lingering from my truck’s tires. Somewhere a woodpecker knocked the hell out of a tree while a squirrel foraged through a pile of bricks covered in green moss.
I whizzed a pebble into the woods and followed Abby into the long building where ragged light caught dust motes in a yellow swath. Down the rows of horses, making brimming sounds with their lips, I heard a woman talking. The air smelled of manure and old leather.
The woman was thin with muscular arms, dark tanned skin, short black hair, and brilliant green eyes. She was a head taller than Abby and wore blue jeans and a gray T-shirt. Ancient brown boots. She had the kind of rapid, quick look that processed your appearance and computed her decision within seconds.
She hugged Abby very tightly.
Abby broke away for a moment and grabbed my hand, pulling me forward. I introduced myself. The woman didn’t say a thing; she looked at me as if I’d just whipped it out and pissed on the stall floors.
“My fly isn’t open? Is it?”
“It better not be,” she said. Sweat stained the front of her T-shirt and a smudge of dirt traced the edge of her jaw. A worn-out pair of Texas show boots, decorated with red roses and cactus, sat by the stall door.
“May I ask what in the fuck a man your age is doing with Abby?”
“She’s helping me with my yard work. Sometimes she plays dominoes with me and feeds my cats.”
Inside, a black quarter horse with a white star shimmied its head from side to side. The woman frowned, strong commalike creases around her mouth.
“What the fuck, Abby?”
“Maggie, calm down. It’s not what you think. He’s helping me.”
“Helping you do what, doll?”
Maggie looked down at my boots and up at my face. I grinned like a giddy criminal in a prison lineup.
“It’s a long story, Maggie. Listen, we really need to talk. Do you know a woman named Ellie?”
“No.”
“Think hard. Said she knows you through her boyfriend. Said y’all had a time at some crawfish boil.”
“I’ve never been to a crawfish boil. That’s for stupid yahoos from Louisiana.”
I smiled. “Exactly.”
“I tried to call,” Abby said.
“Well, sometimes the phone company gets a little pissed when you’re late,” Maggie said.
“You about done ’round here?” Abby asked.
“C’mon,” Maggie said, walking across the smooth brown dirt to the back of the stables. I rested my arms on a battered wood gate and smoothed the white star on the horse’s forehead.
“Nick?” Abby asked.
I turned and she motioned me to follow them. I have to admit I watched the way Maggie walked. Enjoyed it. She sure could wear a pair of jeans. There was something earthy and honest about her. Always had a thing for women who said what was on their minds. Don’t know why. It just seemed like everyone I’d ever really given a damn about could handle herself just as well without me.
“Never told me that she was mean,” I said.
Abby whispered: “She’s pretty, isn’t she?”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
At the second-to-last stall, Maggie stood back with a wide smile across her lips. Abby turned to the stall and, within a couple of seconds, started crying. I moved closer and saw her arms around the neck of a chestnut-colored horse with a black mane.
Maggie kept smiling until she noticed me again. Her eyes narrowed and she dug her boots into the brown dirt. As she continued to beat me in a staring contest, she said sweetly to Abby, “You want to head over to Taylor? Only thing open on Sunday.”
“That okay, Nick?” Abby said.
Maggie kept staring.
I narrowed my eyes back at her and said, “Love to.”
O ld Taylor Road stretched out from Oxford like a familiar song. The road bent and twisted over gentle curves framed by barbed-wire fences as a tired sun dipped low through the pines. Cheap student apartments soon became crooked farmhouses and dilapidated trailers. I’d lived near here for two years but hadn’t been out this way. I followed Maggie’s Rabbit convertible until I was sure we were lost. I thought maybe she was playing some kind of joke on me, now with Abby safely riding with her, or was taking me somewhere where we’d meet a few of her redneck cowboy buddies.
But then we arrived in a loose, brittle collection of storefronts and cottages. Blue and orange light scattered through oaks and slid down onto the tin-roofed shotguns. I pulled in front of an old building with a wide, crooked porch that seemed out of a black-and-white photo from the Depression. Three men sat on a two-by-eight stretched over some rusted paint cans. One played Dobro. The other a fat acoustic bass.