The White Road

“You want to try that one more time?” he whispered.

“Nope,” I answered. “It only works once.”

“What do you do for an encore?”

I removed the big Smith 10 from its holster and let him take a good look at it.

“Encore. Curtain down. Theater closed.”

“Big man with a gun.”

“I know. Look at me.”

He tried to stand upright, thought better of it, and kept his head down instead.

“Look,” I said, “this doesn’t have to be difficult. I talk, I go away. End of story.”

He thought about what I’d said.

“Tereus?” He seemed to be having trouble speaking. I wondered if I’d kicked him too hard.

“Tereus,” I agreed.

“That’s all?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Then you go away and you never come back?”

“Probably.”

He staggered away from the wall and made for the back door. He opened it, the volume of the music immediately increasing, then seemed about to disappear inside. I stopped him by whistling at him and jogging the Smith.

“Just call him,” I said, “then take a walk.” I gestured to where Pittsburg disappeared into warehouses and green grass. “Over there.”

“It’s raining.”

“It’ll stop.”

Handy Andy shook his head, then called into the darkness.

“Tereus, get your ass out here.”

He held the door as a lean man appeared on the step beside him. He had a black man’s hair and dark olive skin. It was almost impossible to tell his race, but his striking features marked him out as a member of one of those strange ethnic groups that seemed to proliferate in the South: Brass Ankle, maybe, or an Appalachian Melungeon, a group of “free people of color” with a mixture of black, Native American, British, and even Portuguese blood, a dash of Turkish reputedly thrown in to confuse the issue even more. A white T-shirt hugged the long thin muscles on his arms and the curve of his pectorals. He was at least fifty years old and taller than I was, but there was no stoop to him, no sign of weakness or disintegration apart from the tinted glasses that he wore. The cuffs of his jeans had been turned up almost to the middle of his shins and he wore plastic sandals on his feet. In his hand was a mop, and I could smell it from where I stood. Even Handy Andy took a step back.

“Damn head again?”

Tereus nodded, looked from Andy to me then back to Andy again.

“Man wants to talk to you. Don’t take too long.” I stepped aside as Andy slowly walked toward me then proceeded onto the road. He took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one as he walked gingerly away, holding the glowing end toward his palm to shelter it from the rain.

Tereus descended onto the pitted tarmac of the yard. He seemed composed, almost distant.

“My name’s Charlie Parker,” I said. “I’m a private detective.”

I reached out my hand but he didn’t take it. In explanation he pointed to the mop. “You don’t want to shake hands with me, suh, not now.”

I gestured to his feet. “Where’d you do your time?”

There were marks around his ankles, circular abrasions as if the skin had been rubbed away to such a degree that it could never be restored to its former smoothness. I knew what those marks were. Only leg irons could leave them.

“Limestone,” he said. His voice was soft.

“Alabama. Bad place to do time.”

Ron Jones, Alabama’s Commissioner of Corrections, had reintroduced chain gangs in 1996: ten hours breaking limestone in 100-degree heat, five days each week, the nights spent with four hundred other inmates in Dorm 16, an overcrowded cattle shed originally built for two hundred. The first thing an inmate on the chain gang did was to remove his laces from his boots and tie them around the irons to prevent the metal from rubbing against his ankles. But somebody had taken Tereus’s laces and kept them from him for a long time, long enough to leave permanent scarring on his flesh.

“Why’d they take away your laces?”

He gazed down at his feet. “I refused to work the gang,” he said. “I’ll be a prisoner, do prisoner’s work, but I won’t be no slave. They tied me to a hitching post in the sun from five A.M. to sunset. They had to drag me back to sixteen. I lasted five days. After that, I couldn’t take no more. To remind me of what I’d done, gunbull took away my laces. That was in ninety-six. I got paroled a few weeks back. I spent a lot of time without laces.”

He spoke matter-of-factly, but he fingered the cross around his neck as he spoke. It was a replica of the one that he had given to Atys Jones. I wondered if his cross contained a blade as well.

“I’ve been employed by a lawyer. His name is Elliot Norton. He’s representing a young man you met in Richland: Atys Jones.”

At the mention of Atys, Tereus’s attitude changed. It reminded me of the woman in the club when it became clear that I wasn’t going to pay for her services. Seemed like I had ended up paying anyway.

“You know Elliot Norton?” I asked.

“Know of him. You’re not from around here?”

“No, I’ve come from Maine.”

“That’s a long way to travel. How come you ended up working way down here?”

“Elliot Norton is a friend of mine, and nobody else seemed keen to get involved in this case.”

“You know where the boy at?”

“He’s safe.”

“No, he’s not.”

“You gave him a cross, just like the one you wear around your neck.”

“You must have faith in the Lord. The Lord will protect you.”

“I’ve seen the cross. Seems like you decided to help the Lord along.”

“Jail is a dangerous place for a young man.”

“That’s why we got him out.”

“You should have left him there.”

“We couldn’t protect him there.”

“You can’t protect him anywhere.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“Give him to me.”

I kicked at a pebble on the ground and watched as it bounced into a puddle. I could see my reflection, already distorted by the rain, ripple even more, and for a moment I disappeared in the dark waters, fragments of myself carried away to its farthest edges.

“I think you know that’s not going to happen, but I’d like to know why you went to Richland. Did you go there specifically to contact Atys Jones?”

“I knew his momma, and his sister. Lived close by them, down by the Congaree.”

“They disappeared.”

“That’s right.”

“You know what might have happened to them?”

He didn’t reply. Instead, he released his grip on the cross and walked toward me. I didn’t step back. There was no threat to me from this man.

“You ask questions for a living, don’t you, suh?”

“I guess so.”

“What questions you been asking Mr. Elliot?”

I waited. There was something going on here that I didn’t understand, some gap in my knowledge that Tereus was trying to fill.

“What questions should I ask?”

“You should ask him what happened to that boy’s momma and aunt.”

“They disappeared. He showed me the cuttings.”

“Maybe.”

“You think they’re dead?”

“You got this the wrong way round, suh. Maybe they dead, but they ain’t disappeared.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Maybe they dead,” he repeated, “but they ain’t gone from Congaree.”

I shook my head. This was the second time in less than twenty-four hours that somebody had spoken to me of ghosts in the Congaree. But ghosts didn’t take rocks and use them to beat in the heads of young women. Around us, the rain had stopped and the air seemed cooler. To my left, I saw Handy Andy approaching from the road. He took one look at me, shrugged resignedly, then lit another cigarette and started back the way he had come.

“You know about the White Road, suh?”

Distracted momentarily by Andy, I now found Tereus almost face-to-face with me. I could smell ci

“No. What is it?”

He looked once again at his feet, and the marks on his ankles.

“On the fifth day,” he said, “after they tied me to the hitching post, I saw the White Road. The blacktop shimmered and then it was like somebody had turned the world inside out. Dark became light, black became white. And I saw the road before me, and the men working, breaking rocks, and the gunbulls spitting chewing tobacco on the dirt.”