Or was Pete the crazy one? Perhaps he was scarred from the war and finally cracked up when he killed Dexter Bell. And it was futile to try and understand his actions.
A slight knock on the door startled them. They stepped out of the office and were met by two unarmed security guards in uniform. One smiled and sort of waved down the hall. They were followed out of the building and the guards watched them drive away.
As they passed the lake, Joel noticed a small park with benches and a gazebo. He turned and drove in that direction. Without a word, he stopped the car, got out and closed the door, lit a cigarette, and walked to a picnic table under a leafless oak. He gazed at the still waters and at the row of buildings on the other side. Stella was soon at his side, asking for a cigarette. They leaned on the table, smoking, saying nothing. Florry arrived a moment later, and the three braved the cold and thought about their next move.
Joel said, “We should go back to Clanton, go to the jail, have a showdown with him, and demand that he allow us to see Mom.”
“And you think that’ll work?” Florry replied.
“Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Stella said. “He’s always one step ahead of us. Somehow he knew we were coming. And here we are — staring at a lake instead of visiting with Mom. I’m not going back to Clanton right now.”
“Neither am I,” said Florry. “We have reservations in the French Quarter, and that’s where I’m going. It’s my car.”
“But you have no license,” Joel said.
“That’s never stopped me before. I’ve actually driven to New Orleans on one occasion. Down and back without a hitch.”
Stella said, “Come on, we deserve some fun.”
Five hours later, Joel turned off Canal Street and onto Royal. The French Quarter was alive with the season and its narrow sidewalks were packed with locals and tourists hustling to dinner and clubs. Buildings and streetlamps were adorned with festive lighting. At the corner of Iberville, Joel stopped in front of the majestic Hotel Monteleone, the grandest hotel in the Quarter. A bellhop took their bags as a valet disappeared with Florry’s car. They strolled into the elegant lobby and entered another world.
Three years earlier, during the depths of the war, when the family was certain Pete was dead but still praying for a miracle, Florry had convinced Liza to allow her to take the kids on a New Year’s trip. In fact, Liza had been invited, but she declined, saying she was simply not in the mood to celebrate. Florry had expected her to say no and was relieved when she did. So, they boarded the train without her, rode six hours from Clanton to New Orleans, and spent three memorable days roaming the Quarter, a place Florry adored and knew well. Their base was the Hotel Monteleone. In its popular bar one night, when she was drinking gin and Joel was sipping bourbon and Stella was eating chocolates, Florry had told them of her great dream of living in the French Quarter, far away from Ford County, in another world where writers and poets and playwrights worked and lived and threw dinner parties. She longed for her dream to come true, but the next morning she apologized for drinking too much and talking so foolishly.
On this Christmas night, the manager was summoned when she arrived with her niece and nephew. There were warm greetings all around, then a glass of champagne. A nine o’clock dinner reservation was confirmed, and they hustled to their rooms to freshen up.
Over cocktails, Florry laid down the ground rules for their stay, which amounted to nothing more than the promise not to discuss either of their parents for the next four days. Joel and Stella readily agreed. Florry had checked with the concierge to find out what was happening in the city, and there was much to explore: a new jazz club on Dauphine, a Broadway production at the Moondance, and several promising new restaurants. In addition to wandering the Quarter and admiring French antiques on Royal, and watching the street acts in Jackson Square, and having chicory coffee and beignets at any one of a dozen cozy sidewalk cafés, and loafing along the levee with the river traffic, and shopping at Maison Blanche, there was, as always, something new in town.
Of course there would be a long dinner at the town house on Chartres Street where Miss Twyla would be waiting. She was a dear old friend from Florry’s Memphis years. She was also a poet who wrote a lot and published little, like Florry. Twyla, though, had the benefit of marrying well. When her husband died young she became a rich widow, one who preferred the company of women over men. She left Memphis about the same time Florry built the pink cottage and went home.
For dinner, they were seated at a choice table in the elegant dining room and surrounded by a well-dressed crowd in the holiday spirit. Waiters in white jackets brought platters of raw oysters and poured ice-cold Sancerre. As the wine relaxed them, they poked fun at the other diners and laughed a lot. Florry informed them she had extended their reservations for an entire week. If they were up to it, they could ring in the New Year at a rowdy dance in the hotel’s grand ballroom.
Ford County was far away.
Chapter 13
At 5:00 a.m. on Monday, January 6, 1947, Ernie Dowdle left his shotgun house in Lowtown and began walking toward the railroad tracks owned by Illinois Central. The temperature was around thirty degrees, seasonal according to the almanac Ernie kept in his kitchen. The weather, especially in the dead of winter, was an important part of his job.
The wind picked up from the northwest, and by the time he arrived at the courthouse twenty minutes later his fingers and feet were cold. As he often did, he stopped and admired the old, stately building, the largest structure in the county, and allowed himself a bit of pride. It was his job to make it warm, something he’d been doing for the past fifteen years, and he, Ernie Dowdle, was very good at it.
This would be no ordinary day. The biggest trial he could remember was about to begin, and that courtroom up there on the second floor would soon be filled. He unlocked the service door on the north side of the building, closed and locked it behind him, turned on a light, and took the stairs to the basement. In the boiler room he went through his wintertime ritual of checking the four burners, only one of which he’d left on through the weekend. It kept the temperature throughout the building at roughly forty degrees, enough to protect the pipes. Next, he checked the dials on the two four-hundred-gallon tanks of heating oil. He had topped them off the previous Friday in anticipation of the trial. He removed a plate and looked inside the exhaust flue. When he was satisfied that the system was in order, he turned on the other three burners and waited for the temperature to rise in the steam boiler situated above them.
As he waited he assembled a table from three soft-drink cases and took a seat with an eye on the dials and gauges and began to eat a cold biscuit his wife had baked the night before. His table was often used for breakfast and lunch, and when things were slow he and Penrod, the janitor, would pull out a checkerboard and play a game or two. He poured black coffee from an old thermos, and as he sipped it he thought about Mr. Pete Banning. He had never met the man, but a cousin lived on the Banning farm and worked the fields. In years past, decades even, Ernie’s people had been farmworkers and most were buried out near the Banning land. Ernie considered himself lucky to have escaped the life of a field hand. He’d made it all the way to town, and to a much better job that had nothing to do with picking cotton.
Ernie, like most black folks in Ford County, was fascinated by the murder of Dexter Bell. After it happened, it had been widely believed that a man as prominent as Pete Banning would never be put on trial. If he’d shot a black man, for any reason whatsoever, he probably would not have been arrested. If a black man murdered another black man, justice would be arbitrarily sought, and by white men only. Issues such as motive, standing, drunkenness, and criminal past were important, but the overriding factor was usually whom the defendant worked for. The right boss could get you a few months in the county jail. No boss could get you strapped to the electric chair.