Chapter Thirty-Seven
It was pretty late in the day when Sheriff Martin and I drove over to Maple Avenue to take a look in the old ice house across the street from Lulabelle Mackenzie’s house. Francis Tompkins was safe in the care of Lucas Barber at the Ransom City Jail, in a cell next to that of Earl Pernell. Lester Macaboo had gone home, probably for a stiff drink. I hadn’t called my grandmother yet but I had a gut feeling that she was doing fine without me. I hadn’t heard about Sally Ann and asked her father about her.
“I told you, Carey,” he said, “she went up to Dallas for the weekend to see her cousins. She’ll be back tomorrow.”
I didn’t pursue it any further and soon we were on Maple Avenue.
There were kids playing out in the street again and they followed us as we got out of the car and walked over to the ice house. It was a squat, wooden frame building that, on close inspection, looked as if it hadn’t been touched in years. I was too young to recall the days when ice wagons brought blocks of ice around to everyone’s house, but the sheriff remembered.
“When I was a kid,” he told me, “none of us ever came over to this part of town. White and colored folks just didn’t mix. I never saw this place until it was all boarded up, the way it is now. But I sure remember that horse that used to pull the ice wagon. Twice a week, old man Barnes would bring a block around the back with his big tongs. He was always smiling and I thought he was the strongest man I’d ever seen. Black as night and always sweating.”
We walked around the perimeter of the ice house together, and I was glad that the heat had let up somewhat in the early evening. The kids, about seven of them I guess and all black, followed us at a short distance, curious about what we were doing but afraid to ask.
“We’ll need a crowbar for this board,” he said, finally, looking at a board that had been nailed over the door in front. He gave me the keys to his trunk and I walked over to the car and got the crowbar out.
He pried the board off and we pulled it off its last, rusty nails together. The kids stood back and we tossed it aside. The dry old wood weighed less than I thought it would. Under the board was a large set of double doors that swung open. The inside of the ice house was very dark but with both of the big doors open the outside light slowly filtered in and our eyes quickly adjusted. There, on the dusty floor off to the right of the door, was the body of a black man. There were no flies and I don’t recall noticing a bad smell; I didn’t think about it at the time, but looking back I wonder if the dry wood and the sawdust in the old ice house preserved Raymond Mackenzie’s body until we could find it.
I blocked the kids from seeing and Sheriff Martin came out and pulled the doors shut. “Hate to say this,” he said, looking across the street, “but I’m afraid I’ll have to have someone identify the body. Want to bet Mrs. Mackenzie is watching us from inside her house over there?”
I looked over and thought I saw movement of a curtain in the window. I stood guard in front of the ice house while the sheriff walked slowly across the street and up onto the porch where I had stood several days before. Moments later, he and Mrs. Mackenzie came walking back across the street. She didn’t even look at me as they went in. “Stay there,” the sheriff said to me, and I remained outside, keeping the kids at bay.
A minute later they came out, and she was crying and holding onto the sheriff. “Go on home, now,” he said to the kids, and they obeyed quietly. Mrs. Mackenzie had finally found her missing son.
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