Chapter Thirty-Six
Sheriff Martin and I left Earl Pernell there in Dr. Merkelson’s care and walked out of the emergency room together. We stood in the lobby for a few moments, thinking, then he said: “Shoot.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Lester Macaboo,” he replied. “In all the excitement I have no idea where he got to. Do you?”
I thought back to Ruby’s Palace of Beauty and the three of us standing outside, just before Earl Pernell took off running. “Last I saw him was in front of Ruby’s,” I told him.
There were two pay phones on the front wall of the hospital lobby. Sheriff Martin picked up one and dialed the operator. “This is Sheriff Martin,” he said. “Put me through to Lester Macaboo’s house.” He paused for a few moments, then got an answer. “Yes, this is Sheriff Martin. Lester around?” He listened. “I see. Well, tell him I’m on my way over with Carey Lovett.” He hung up and we walked out into the late afternoon sun of the parking lot.
“That was one of the help,” he said. “A woman. She said Lester just got back but wasn’t taking any calls. I want to get over there to find out what’s going on. You game?”
I nodded in agreement and we got in the patrol car and took off, a little above the speed limit, for the Macaboo house on the other side of Ransom.
We were there in ten minutes or less. Sheriff Martin parked his car at the curb and we got out and went to the back door, which I knew led into the kitchen. I had never seen anyone go in or out of the ornate front door of the Macaboo house.
The sheriff knocked and a young black woman answered. “Sheriff Martin to see Lester Macaboo,” he said. Before she could reply, I heard Lester’s voice come from behind the wall that encircled the pool area.
“Just hold your horses, Jimmy, I’m coming,” he said.
We walked back around to the carport and there was Lester, dressed in the same casual clothes we’d seen him
in earlier but wearing sandals. “Didn’t mean to run out on you before, but I didn’t see any reason for me to
stay. How’d everything go?”
“Let’s just say we’ve had a busy few hours of it,” the sheriff replied. “How’d you get home, Lester?”
Lester gave him a brief look that I couldn’t read, then answered. “Funny thing, Jimmy,” he said. “I was standing there in the middle of South 12th Street watching you fellas run when up pulled one of my houseboys and gave me a ride home. Strange coincidence, don’t you think?”
“Very strange,” I said. “Like everything else around here lately.”
They both looked at me and I didn’t say anything.
“Who picked you up, Lester?” asked the sheriff.
“My houseboy Francis,” he replied.
“Francis Tompkins?”
“That’s the one.”
“Where is he now?”
“Can’t say. He has the afternoon off and he was on his way somewhere when he dropped me off here.”
“Lester,” said Sheriff Martin, “something’s come up.” He looked across the street at Aunt Millie’s house and paused for a moment. “Francis is involved in this thing.”
“What do you mean?” asked Lester, calmly.
Sheriff Martin told my cousin about what had happened with Earl Pernell, and about what he had said. Lester looked at me, and for the first time that I had ever seen there was a crack in his facade. He looked older to me then, and a little bit scared. “Is this true, Carey?” he said.
“Yes,” I said, quietly.
“You’ve known Francis a long time,” he continued. “Can you believe any of this?” His tone was hopeful.
“I don’t know what to believe today,” I replied. “I’ve never seen dead people before, I’ve never seen anyone get shot before. I’m learning lots of new things today. I kind of wish I’d stayed out of it all.”
Sheriff Martin gave me an angry look. “It’s too late for that, Carey,” he said. “You’re in it as much as anyone now.” He turned to Lester. “Lester, we have to find Francis. How can we do that?”
“Well, Bessie Lee might know,” he said, looking over at Aunt Millie’s.
“Bessie Lee?” the sheriff replied.
“Bessie Lee Jenkins,” Lester said. “Momma’s housegirl. She’s Francis’s cousin, I think. She might know.”
“Is she there now?” Sheriff Martin asked.
“I reckon so,” Lester replied. “Let’s go find out.”
We walked across the street, side by side. Lester didn’t bother to ring the doorbell; he just opened the back door and poked his head in. “Momma?” he yelled. “Bessie Lee?” A loud, high-pitched voice replied from somewhere in the house, and I knew we had found Bessie Lee.
Lester let me and the sheriff in and we stood in the kitchen. Bessie Lee came bustling in and stopped when she saw the sheriff. She had been about to greet us but she remained quiet.
“Hello, Bessie Lee,” said Lester.
“Mr. Lester,” she replied, ducking her head slightly.
“Bessie Lee, something serious has come up. Sheriff Martin here needs to find Francis. Do you know where he is.”
“Francis?” she questioned.
“Tompkins,” the sheriff added.
“He ain’t at your place, is he, Mr. Lester?” she said.
“No, Bessie Lee, if he were we wouldn’t be here.”
“Stands to reason,” she said. “Sunday afternoon, four-thirty or so, where could he be?” she said to herself. “Have you tried his place out to Levens?”
“Where is that?” the sheriff asked.
She described a path out the country highway through old roads where I’d never been before. We followed it in the sheriff’s car and found Francis Tompkins at a house that looked a lot like the one where I’d visited Horace Monroe. Francis was in his undershirt and was sweating and drinking a beer on the porch with two other young black men. He jumped up fast when the car pulled up, and he put the beer down in a hurry when he saw Lester get out. His friends actually ran away down the road, but no one watched them go.
“How do, Mister Lester, what brings you out here?” Francis said in his loud, happy voice. His face didn’t look so happy but he was trying.
“Sheriff Martin wants to talk to you, Francis,” Lester said, and looked at the sheriff. Francis looked at me for a moment, then at the sheriff.
“Yessir?” he asked, hopefully.
“Francis, I have to ask you some questions,” the sheriff began. “Would you like to sit down?”
Francis looked back inside his house and shook his head. He mopped sweat off his forehead with a bandanna he pulled from his hip pocket. “Nosir, sheriff, I don’t think y’all’d want to come inside my house right now. It’s a mess. I reckon it’s hotter in there than it is out here anyway,” he added. “Us po’ colored folks don’t got air conditioning, most of the time.
“Why don’t we just talk out here on the porch? Got some shade,” he said.
I sat down on the steps and the sheriff and Lester sat in the aluminum porch chairs. Francis remained standing before them, like a little boy called to the principal’s office.
“Francis, it’s hard to know where to start,” said Sheriff Martin. “I guess the best place is with Earl Pernell.”
Francis looked shaken at the mention of Earl’s name.
“I see you know him,” said the sheriff. Lester just looked sadly down at the peeling paint on the porch.
“We had a run in with Earl today, Francis,” said the sheriff, “and he took a shot at me.”
“You don’t mean it,” said Francis in a low voice.
“Sure enough,” said the sheriff. “My deputy had to take him down with a bullet to the leg.” Francis gave a low whistle. “Do you know what Earl told me?”
“I reckon you’re about to tell me,” replied Francis.
“Just a bit,” the sheriff said. “He told me about what happened with Raymond Mackenzie and his sister. He confessed to killing Lulabelle and beating Raymond to death, though Raymond’s death may have been an accident and I’m not sure he meant to kill Lulabelle, either. I think Earl was drunk the whole time. What do you think about all of that?”
Francis looked at me, imploringly. I looked away. “Don’t know right what I should be thinkin’ at this point, sir,” he told the sheriff.
“Earl told me something else, too, Francis,” the sheriff said. “He told me you paid him to beat up Raymond for some information. Do you know anything about that?”
Francis looked mighty scared just then and started talking fast. His voice was as loud as ever but the register got a little higher than usual. This is what he said:
“Sheriff, I may have given Earl a few dollars to find out somethin’ for me, but I never told him to hurt Tootsie, you can be sure of that. I swear to almighty God I never told him to do that. I didn’t know nothin’ ‘bout Tootsie’s sister, neither. Earl never tol’ me that.”
“What did you want to find out?” Lester asked.
“Tootsie was shootin’ off his mouth ‘bout somethin’ that wasn’t none of his business, that’s what. Somethin’ that concerns me and nobody else.”
“Is this about the bet, Francis?” I asked. The three of them turned and looked at me. Francis looked shocked. Lester looked surprised. Sheriff Martin just looked annoyed.
“How’d you know ‘bout that, Mister Carey?” Francis asked.
“It’s a long story,” I told him.
“Francis, is that what this is all about?” Lester asked, and Francis nodded.
“Kinda,” he said. “You see, you and I is good ‘bout this and understand everything. We’s just fine. But Tootsie done found an old file when he was cleanin’ up some stuff from the old buildin’, and he got a bee in his bonnet.”
“Shit,” said Lester. I looked at Sheriff Martin and he asked the next question.
“What did Raymond find, Francis?”
“He found some papers drawn up by my father and Mr. Lester’s father a long time ago. These papers don’t mean nothin’ to me, and me and Mr. Lester have an arrangement that’s just fine.”
“In other words,” Lester said, “Francis has a job with me for life. My daddy did some foolish things in his day, but that bet was about the damnedest one.”
“So it’s true?” I said. “About the horse race and the bet?”
“Yessir, Mister Carey,” said Francis. “It’s the God’s honest truth. My daddy and Mr. Lester’s daddy was thick as thieves.” Lester shot Francis a look. “Pardon the expression,” said Francis. “The race and the bet was for real alright, but my daddy never intended to hold anyone to it. He was happy workin’ for Mr. Lester’s daddy just as it was. But Mr. Lester’s daddy, he was an honest man, and while he wasn’t about to turn the bakery over to a colored man, he did promise to take care of Daddy and me for the rest of our lives.
“I done left it at that and Mr. Lester here has always been good as his daddy’s word. But when Tootsie was cleanin’ up and doin’ what he shouldn’t have been doin’, which was sittin’ there readin’ through them old papers, he found a letter ‘bout the bet that made it look like the bakery should belong to my daddy and to me.
“Tootsie came to me ‘bout it and I tol’ him it wasn’t nothin’ and wasn’t none of his business, anyway. But he wouldn’t shut up. He just kept on talkin’ ‘bout how the white man had gone and done it again, takin’ away from the black man what was rightfully his.
“Tootsie liked to drink, and he started talkin’ it up at the roadhouse and whisperin’ to people that he knew somethin’ and the black man was gonna get what was comin’ to him. People started thinkin’ Tootsie had somethin’ when actually he had a big bunch of nothin’. And it was just drivin’ me crazy. Tootsie started to make stuff up, far as I know, and I had to find out what he was aimin’ to do. I didn’t want to mess things up for me and my boy with Mr. Lester here by Tootsie shootin’ off his mouth and embarrasin’ everyone.”
“I understand, Francis,” Lester said gently. He shook his head and looked off across the fields. Sheriff Martin stood up and said:
“Francis, I believe I’m going to have to take you in for awhile. I don’t know what we’re going to do about all of this.”
“That’s okay, sheriff,” Francis said. “Jes’ as long as it don’t hurt my boy.”
“I don’t know what we’ll do about that, either,” Sheriff Martin said. The four of us walked slowly over to the police car and drove back to Ransom.
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