The White Road

I thanked them both for the lemonade, then followed Elliot to the door.

“You leavin’ me here?” cried Atys. “With these two?”

“Dat boy ent hab no ma

“Debblement weh dat chile lib.”

“Get off me,” he retorted, but he looked kind of worried.

“Be good, Atys,” said Elliot. “Watch some TV, get some sleep. Mr. Parker will check on you tomorrow.”

Atys raised his eyes to mine in a last, desperate plea.

“Shit,” he said, “by tomorrow these two probably have eaten me.”

When we left him, the old woman had just started poking him again. Outside, we passed their son, Samuel, on the way back to the house. He was a tall, handsome man, my age or a little younger, with large brown eyes. Elliot introduced us and we shook hands.

“Any trouble?” asked Elliot.

“None,” Samuel confirmed. “I parked outside your office. Keys are on top of the right rear wheel.”

Elliot thanked him and he headed toward the house.

“You sure he’ll be okay with them?” I asked Elliot.

“They’re smart, like their boy, and the folks round here look out for them. Any strangers come sniffing down this street and half the young bucks will be following them before they have a chance to get their shoes dirty. As long as he’s here, and no-one finds out about it, he’ll be safe.”

The same faces watched us leave their streets and I thought that maybe Elliot was right. Maybe they would take account of strangers coming into their neighborhood.

I just wasn’t sure that it would be enough to keep Atys Jones safe from harm.

12

ELLIOT AND I exchanged a few words outside the house, then parted. Before we did, he handed me a newspaper from the backseat of his car.

“Since you been reading the newspapers so closely, you happen to see this?”

The story was buried in the lifestyles section and headlined IN THE MIDST OF TRAGEDY, CHARITY. The Larousses were hosting a charity lunch in the grounds of an old plantation house on the western shore of Lake Marion later that week, one of two large houses that the family owned. From the list of expected guests, half the grandees in the state were going to be there.

“While still mourning the death of his beloved daughter Maria

I handed the paper back to Elliot.

“You can bet that there’ll be judges and prosecutors there, probably the governor too,” he said. “They should just hold the trial right there on the lawn and get done with it.”

Elliot told me he had business to conclude back at his office, and we agreed to meet again over the next day or two to discuss progress and options. I followed his car as far as Charleston Place, then peeled off and parked. I showered in my room and called Rachel. She was just about to head into South Portland for a reading at Nonesuch Books. She’d mentioned it to me a couple of days earlier, but I’d forgotten about it until now.

“An interesting thing happened today,” she said, giving me just enough time to get the word “hi” out of my mouth. “I opened the front door and there was a man on my doorstep. A big man. A very big, very black man.”

“Rachel-”

“You said it would be discreet. His T-shirt had the words ‘Klan Killer’ written on the front.”

“I-”

“And do you know what he said?”

I waited.

“He handed me a note from Louis and told me he was lactose intolerant. That was it. Note. Lactose intolerant. Nothing else. He’s coming to the reading with me. It was all I could do to get him to change his T-shirt. The new one reads ‘Black Death.’ I’m going to tell people it’s a rap band. Do you think it’s a rap band?”

I figured it was probably his occupation, but I didn’t say that. Instead, I said the only thing I could think of to say.

“Maybe you’d better buy some soy milk.”

She hung up without saying good-bye.

Despite the earlier rain, it was still stiflingly warm when I left the hotel to grab a bite to eat, and I felt as if my clothes were soaked through before I’d walked more than a few blocks. I passed the site of the Confederate Museum, its exterior now surrounded by scaffolding, and headed into the residential district between East Bay and Meeting, admiring the big old houses, the lamps by their doors glowing softly. It was just after ten and the tourists had begun to throng the dive bars on East Bay that sold premixed cocktails in souvenir glasses. Young men and women cruised up and down Broad, rap and nu-metal grinding out insistent, competing beats. Fred Durst, record company vice president, proud father and multimillionaire, was telling the kids how their parents just didn’t understand his generation. There’s nothing sadder than a thirty-year-old man in short trousers rebelling against his mom and dad.

I was looking for somewhere to eat when I saw a familiar face at the window of Magnolia’s. Elliot was sitting across from a woman with jet-black hair and tight lips. He was eating, but the pained look on his face told me that he wasn’t enjoying his meal, maybe because the woman was clearly unhappy with him. She was leaning across the table, her palms flat upon the cloth, and her eyes were blazing. Elliot gave up trying to feed himself and spread out his hands in a “Be reasonable” gesture, the one that men use when they’re feeling put upon by a woman. It doesn’t work, mainly because there’s nothing guaranteed to add fuel to the fire of a male-female argument quicker than one party suggesting to the other that she’s being unreasonable. True to form, the woman stood up abruptly and walked determinedly from the restaurant. Elliot didn’t follow. He sat for a moment looking after her, then shrugged resignedly, picked up his knife and fork and resumed his meal. The woman, dressed entirely in black, got into an Explorer parked a couple of doors down from the restaurant and drove off into the night. She wasn’t crying but her anger lit up the interior of the SUV like a flare. Out of little more than habit I memorized the tag number. I briefly considered joining Elliot but I didn’t want him to think that I might have seen the argument and, anyway, I wanted some time alone.

I ended up on Queen Street and ate at Poogan’s Porch, a Cajun and Low Country restaurant that was rumored to be a favorite of Paul Newman and Joa

“Is there something wrong with your food, sir?”

It was the waiter. I looked up at him but he was blurred, like a Batut photograph in which images of different individuals had been overlaid on one another to create a single composite.

“No,” I said. “It’s fine. I’ve just lost my appetite.”

I wanted him to go away. I couldn’t look at his face. It reminded me of slow decay.

The cockroaches were clicking across the sidewalks when I left the restaurant, the remains of those that had not been quick enough to avoid human footfalls lying scattered in small dark piles, troops of ants already feeding hungrily upon them. I found myself walking down deserted streets watching the lights in the windows of the houses, catching shadow plays of the lives continuing behind the drapes. I missed Rachel and wished that she were with me. I wondered how she was getting along with the Klan Killer, now apparently aka Black Death. Trust Louis to send along the only guy who looked more conspicuous than he did, but at least I was no longer worrying as much about Rachel. I still wasn’t even sure how much help I could be to Elliot down here. True, I was curious about the jailhouse preacher who had given Atys Jones the T-bar knife, but it seemed to me that I was somehow adrift from all that was happening, that I had not yet found a way to break the surface and explore the depths beneath, and I still didn’t fully share Elliot’s faith in the ability of the old Gullah couple and their son to handle any situation that might arise. I found a public phone and checked in with the safe house. The old man answered and confirmed that all was well.