Time of Grace Read online

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right as an explanation…that the town is bad. It feels more as if the bad is in people. Random people or something.”

  “When I was a little girl, I remember when three girls were molested. They arrested some vagrant, and I still recall how everyone scoffed and was angry that his defense was he had thought about doing it and imagined it but had never touched the girls. He mysteriously fell off a train and cracked his skull, you know how that goes; they got rid of him and people thought he was an alcoholic liar.

  But the story stuck with me, David. How he said he never touched them, just thought of it.” Annelle Stevenson fixed fresh drinks.

  “Strange.”

  “I want to share with you now.”

  “Okay.”

  “I never told anyone this. When I was seven, my daddy came home really late, after midnight. Momma was asleep, and I had gotten up for some milk,” she told me. He held his finger to his lips and said ‘shhhh’ to me. My daddy was a good, gentle man, never drinking or raising his voice, but I was terrified of him that night, David.

  His face was flushed, clothes disheveled, boots dirty…but it was his face that scared me the most. He was there, but not there, as if he were hearing some other voice that was taking most of his attention. Distracted. It was as if he only kind of knew who I was.”

  “What happened?”

  “I scooted back to bed. I guess I finally fell asleep, and Daddy was normal the next day. Momma asked about his boots, and he claimed he didn’t recall getting them dirty, and the weird part was, I could tell he really didn’t remember it.

  Now…I heard the story later from some older children, but that night he was out, three Negroes were lynched.”

  “My God.”

  “I can tell you that my dad was the most liberal man ever, all about civil rights, and he wasn’t one to ever hurt a soul, but he sometimes was around a man, a hateful man who called them ‘niggers’ and was quick-fisted with his own children and wife. We saw the bruises. Dad didn’t like the fellow, but he was connected in business…so….”

  “That’s pretty ugly,” I said.

  “You know we have a red-light district? But have you ever heard anyone really talk about the local whore-house?”

  “No, Annelle, you’ve sort of been putting your own puzzle together, haven’t you?”

  “Let’s say I have noticed things; maybe it’s the town, David.”

  “It’s random people…evil people.”

  She nodded, “And it’s not like you write about them, too…but they are just people who go about…and have some horrible, dark influence on others, and they either hurt others or cause it to happen…with words or…something.”

  “Charles Manson. His awful ideas and plans just…filled the people who followed him. It was as if they couldn’t even think rationally anymore.”

  “But they physically committed the acts. What you are suggesting with those girls here who vanished, or died or were murdered…and my Gracie…that is more than that. It wasn’t someone doing all that by hand.”

  “Not by hand.” I mulled it over. “The hand of the killer is just a tool…like a knife or gun. The words to drive a girl to run into a street blindly, a lynch mob, a fall from a tree, a nasty fantasy… just tools. Annelle, if those are tools…”

  “Do you believe in the Devil?”

  “Not as in a forked tail and red suit, but I believe in evil and in evil forces.”

  She shrugged. “Like a game of chess. God and Satan. Good and bad. Light and dark. It’s always been this way; life is based on the universal theme. Things have been quieter in town, David…it’s been peaceful here. Why are you back?”

  “Because I’m needed. I think I’ve been called back.”

  She shivered.

  “I need to go,” I said

  I hugged her, promising to see her again to bounce ideas. I wanted to see Mr. Stevenson, too. At the door, she looked at me expectantly, “Which side called you, David? The good or bad?”

  I didn’t know.

  Chapter 21

  I spent the next day swimming with my parents, catching up.

  That afternoon, I went on a fact-finding trip. Will Lofton’s brother, Brad, was still with law enforcement, so I looked him up at his house.

  “Come in, come in.” he motioned. I said hello to his wife and children, signed my books for his wife, made some basic small talk, said, ‘no,’ I wasn’t staying for dinner but ‘thanks anyway’, then, with a beer, joined Brad in the den; he was laughing. “We can get caught up on life and times in small town Texas.”

  “How’s the law business treating you?”

  “Can’t complain, or I’d never stop.” He chuckled. “I read your books too…sounds like you know as much as I do…more really.” He was several cans into his cold six-pack.

  I asked about Will and about their parents. Small talk. Brad finally settled into a thoughtful, quiet lull, looking at me expectantly. “So what brings you to my house?”

  “I dunno. Questions.”

  “About?”

  “Law, I guess.”

  “I see,” he said.

  “You were just starting out when Susie Cogburn from New Boston was strangled. Remember her?”

  “A little. I was just beginning.” Wary.

  “Several girls vanished or were killed back then, remember that little girl at Spring Lake Park?”

  He chugged his beer, opened another. “That was bad.”

  “Do you really think she fell out of a tree and broke her neck?”

  “Well, the coroner said she did. David, why’re you asking about things that happened a long time back?”

  “Diggin’ up bones, huh?”

  “I would say so,” he said.

  “All those girls were light-eyed and had long blonde hair.”

  “Maybe they did.”

  “So did my girlfriend.”

  “What was her name…Grace?” he nodded. “I remember she died, too.”

  “Broken neck.”

  “Hit by a car, two-toned, nice car. You don’t really think that lady meant to hit her, do you?”

  “No,” I said. “Just all of them dying of the same cause…sets uneasy with me.”

  “Wasn’t the same cause.”

  “They had broken necks. How common is that, Brad?”

  “ You think you’re the only one who noticed that?” Brad eyed me up. “Big boys were watching, but they had nothing connecting them but some off-beat similarities. And that’s still all it is. It ain’t like your books, David; we’re small time around here.”

  “Seems a lot of shit happens here, and no one connects it, and it gets swept under the rug.”

  “Naw. Like what?”

  “1946. And the molesting of some girls and a lynching of three men.”

  “You’re reaching. That’s the writer in you.” He chuckled again. “David, there’s no conspiracy or secret agenda or cover-up. Those are crimes that happen in places. We have our share of crime like any small city.”

  “I buy that. But I don’t buy coincidence all the time.”

  “Coincidences happen. Random crime.”

  “Not in crime, come on, Brad.”

  “You’re reaching.”

  “Something feels off about everything, and people know it but don’t say it. I don’t know what I expected you to tell me.” I stood. “It was good seeing you.”

  “You gonna let it go?” he asked, didn’t get up.

  “Nah.”

  “Let it go.”

  “None of it fits together, and it’s maybe just a coincidence, but no one talks about any of it. Ever. That’s not working with me. I have the time, gonna mosey on over to the library and look at some old stories and dig around.”

  “Oh, hell, David. Can’t you just let it all go? You don’t wanna do this.”

  “I don’t?”

  “Naw. But you are.”

  “Yep, I am,” I said.

  “ I
see that. After Grace died, Will told me how you raved and talked out of your head, bothered him something awful. Sit down.”

  I sat.

  “Will was worrying, and it sounded like a crock of shit to me. But I was young and had a soft spot, I guess. So I got to diggin’ and looking around in stuff, old stories, and pictures and talking to people, digging through old files in the basement before I was told by the higher-ups to knock it off and stay out of the past.”

  “You said there wasn’t a cover up.”

  “There wasn’t. They wanted me to let things go and not stir up old, sad memories. But that was all. They had never looked at everything like I did, and I am asking you now, not to go where I went. Let it go. There is no answer and no good to come from diggin’ around.”

  “I’m going to look.”

  “Sighing heavily, he finished his beer and opened another, still sober. “And I can’t persuade you to not?”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Then I’ll save you some time and give you what I found, but again, there ain’t no answers in it, just more questions and more unrest.”

  “I haven’t rested in eighteen years.”

  “Neither have I. Oh, sometimes I go weeks, maybe a month or two without thinking of this, but then I’d see or imagine I saw something, and I’d start thinking about it again.” He paused. “That girl of yours…Grace…she had a certain look.”

  “Yeh. She would have fit in at Woodstock.”

  “She let her hair fall all free and had those wide green eyes, big eyes, smudges beneath her eyes, wide mouth with plump lips…distinct look. And Susie Cogburn had the same look, so did a missing girl and that little gal we found at the park, and another that was found on the Arkansas side. You never heard about the hooker we found overdosed that looked like those….”

  “But she overdosed?”

  “Yup. Then she fell down some stairs, broke her neck.”

  Chills running my arms, I got another beer, waving at the kids playing in the hallway. I settled in again, “And the lynching that was covered up?”

  “Someone had to go telling you about that….”

  “You bet.”

  “Now that lynching, they hushed that up right fast as some of the doctors and businessmen were said to have been involved in that one.

  Got blamed on a vagrant and that was that, and those rich men were just witnesses to seeing some bum grabbing some Negroes and hangin’ them. Said they were there after the fact, and it was all brushed under the carpet, fast. You read accounts, and most of it is contradictory, anyway.

  This was a long time ago, David. It was a dark thing that happened…they didn’t want that public. They were beaten first, those Negro were…and I think…mind you, this is my take on it…I think and am pretty sure I’m right…that they were all beer soaked and loud, angry, and full of bull that night, indignant and not willing to let the law handle things. I think they planned on beating them and then going home to sleep it off.”

  “Really.”

  “I think that was what they had in their heads. Those fellows were drunk and rowdy and got in over their heads. I think they caught those Negroes down at the creek and whooped on them, and it got out of hand, and someone saw the ropes for swimming and lynched them. But the fact is those three black fellows had been up to no good.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean they were down at the creek with a white girl.”

  “Oh.” I had been around for desegregation in schools and forced busing. I had seen hatred on both sides of the cultural line, but I also knew what three black men, being alone with a white girl, meant in the past and how it would anger white men. I knew how the division of races had been and the cruelty involved.

  “So what I think happened was those Negroes were with the girl, and some men chanced by, saw them, and grabbed up the three to beat them senseless. Nasty business. Those fellows had to know, if they were seen, how people would react.”

  The men, according to Brad, had seen or heard what was going on, used the ropes to lynch the men and then grabbed a vagrant, drunker than they were, to blame. The vagrant wasn’t treated too badly; he was wanted in another state and simply shipped away.

  The girl had had sexual intercourse with one or more of the black men, and in the turmoil, she had rolled down the creek bed, breaking her neck and bashing in her head. She was found partially nude, bleeding, bruised, and dead after everything was sorted and the police were there.

  The boys, sweating, nervous and regretful, had all sobered up with their stories the same, claiming to be witnesses. The bum was drunk and passed out. Three dark bodies, hands tied behind them with trash from the area, hanged, necks lengthened, tongues bulging, swung from the creek bank; one had shoes dragging in the mud.

  “Who pushed her?” I asked.

  “Dunno. Maybe it was an accident. It was said the Negroes did, but the other men might have; a girl back then doing that…well, she would have been shunned. Even if she were raped, back then, if you were raped by three black fellows in the dark by a creek, who was gonna buy it? She would have been seen as trash. It was the times, David.”

  “That’s pretty sick.”

  “I don’t suppose anyone got a description of the girl?”

  “Sure they did, looked like the other blonde, green-eyed gals.” He paused. “You okay? You went a little pale there.”

  “I’ll be okay.” I hoped I would.

  “I told you that you didn’t want to go digging in this.” Brad took a deep breath. “I’ll save you the suspense and tell you back when they got that man for molesting the girls, one was a blonde-haired, light-eyed little doll. I did my research. Wasn’t ten years before she hanged herself, for sure suicide.”

  “Damn.”

  “You can look up those murders in ’46 and tell me one isn’t the spitting image of Grace. Coroner didn’t list broken neck but…” Brad looked miserable. “Seems every gal looking like her gets killed, accident or murder, and then people around them, too…”

  “You remember how Bernie beat Walter nearly to death and then Jennifer?”

  Brad said Bernie had a colorful history, too. He went off to LSU but came back after he was involved in the death of a student there. Brad had memorized all the details. Bernie was a mediocre football player. Meeting a girl named Mitzi Varner, he settled into college, barely passing, playing second string.

  One night at a dance club, Bernie started a fight, accusing Mitzi of cheating on him, coming to blows with a bystander, and finally being thrown out with his friends by a bouncer.

  Mitzi, upset, jumped into a car with her friends, and they roared off; three of the four girls died on impact when the car hit a bridge. Mitzi’s neck was broken. “And she was a little blue-eyed blonde,” Brad added. Bernie had returned to town, never finishing school.

  “Bernie strikes again,” I said.

  “You remember Sandra Curry?”

  I nodded.

  “Describe her.”

  I did. She was a small girl with long, light brown hair and big, bright blue eyes.

  “When they found her, she had her hair colored blonde. It was an accident, but she had a crushed vertebrae, and that colored hair made me think. No one said anything, but I thought about it. ” Brad shrugged. “The rumor mill had her dating someone, but no one knew who it was, for sure. I heard it was my brother.”

  “Will?”

  “That was the rumor, but he didn’t date her. No evidence as to whom it was, if anyone, but it made me think.

  Okay, now fast forward,” Brad explained.

  Bernie, in 1971, had been dating April Sutherland. Will was at the lake that day. Bernie was criticizing April, embarrassing her, making her unhappy. He accused her of flirting and wearing a skimpy swimsuit. They all climbed the rocks to dive, and Will helped April up the slippery rocks while Bernie ignored her.

  A bunch of kids were there, college age, all of them leaping far off the ledge and down, way down
to the water. April got ready to jump, slipping sideways as she ran out, causing her head to snap back and thump the stones on the wall and then again at the base, as she fell. April died of massive head and neck injuries.

  “Good Lord, Brad.”

  “Will was devastated, and Bernie was just hysterical. Will said the guy was crying like crazy. But again, she was blonde with bluish-green eyes. And you could say well…he prefers that type.”

  “Like Grace.”

  “Right. But still…it’s odd.”

  I threw our cans away. “So do you think he is the one, somehow?”

  “No. Maybe. I don’t know what to think. I think that for a long time, girls who look a certain way have been dying. I think that it happens around here, but I don’t know why or who or what causes it.

  Bernie wasn’t around back then when some of this happened and other crimes I have seen that look like this…and yes, there have been others. But I don’t think he planned for anyone to die. I don’t think he has hurt anyone on purpose.”

  “Do you think he knows?”

  “I don’t think so. From talks with him; no, he doesn’t know. And I really don’t think he does it on purpose. But again, he wasn’t around way back then.”

  “His relatives were.”

  “So were yours, David, and mine. But remember I said that gal died, and those Negroes were lynched; they were not with her but still died. And there was a fire about...oh three-four years back, little girl, blonde, blue eyed cutie, she died and so did her family.”

  “It isn’t every blonde, light-eyed girl though.”

  “No, only the ones who look like Grace, and each of those looked like her, well, not Sandra too much, but kind of.

  But David, I’m saying it’s like poison; you just got into town right? You’ll see; maybe you did okay with life, but a few of the others didn’t; things went bad for several here. Remember what I’m saying here; it’s like poison.”

  Chapter 22