The Quiet Game

“Yeah, well. Most of you is sitting right here. And your daughter needs that part.”

“I know. I keep thinking about Del Payton’s widow. Race doesn’t even come into it for me. For thirty years part of her has been buried wherever her husband is. We’re both wounded the same way. You know?”

Sam shuts off the engine. “Listen to me, Penn. Whoever blew up Del Payton was in their twenties then, thirties max. Kluckers full of piss and vinegar. Those guys have got wives and grown kids now. And if you think they’re gonna let some hotshit, nigger-lovin’ writer take all that away, you’re nuts. That’s who shot at you tonight. And if you keep pushing, they’ll kill you.”

Sam has the Jew’s special fear of fanatics. During the civil rights era this anxiety caused many Mississippi Jews to keep as low a profile as possible. Some gave heroic support to the Movement; others, primarily in the Delta, actually joined the White Citizens’ Councils, for fear of the consequences if they didn’t. Sam’s parents chose the difficult middle ground.

“Don’t worry, Sam. Caitlin Masters has given everybody the idea I’m a crusading liberal, ready to drag the town through the mud. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

“Bullshit. I know you when you sound like this. You’ll pull down the temple to find the truth.”

“I remember you sounding like this once. That time in junior high, when your dad hired us to clean out his attic?”

Sam gives no sign that he’s heard, but I know he has.

“Going through all those boxes,” I remind him. “We found that list. Two hundred names, all handwritten.”

He reaches out and toys with the Hummer’s ignition key. The papers we found had listed most members of Natchez’s Ku Klux Klan and White Citizens’ Council. The Jewish community had maintained the list as a security measure, and more than a few names on it belonged to fathers of kids we went to school with.

“You remember how you felt when you saw those names?”

He picks up the drink cup and nervously shakes the ice. “Scared.”

“Me too. But it pissed me off more. I wanted to expose those assholes for what they were. So did you. Have you ever done business with anybody on that list?”

He looks up, his eyes hard as agates. “Not a fucking one. And I spiked them where I could.”

A side spill of headlights washes across my parents’ house.

“Would you look at this?” Sam mutters, looking over his shoulder. “It’s the same car.”

The sheriff’s cruiser sits idling in the street, fifteen yards behind us.

Bolstered by the confidence of being on my father’s property, I set the .45 in Sam’s lap, climb out of the Hummer, and walk toward the car. The passenger window whirs down into the door frame. It’s the black deputy who followed me before. I put my hands on the door and lean into the window.

“Can I help you?”

The deputy says nothing. He has a bald, bullet-shaped head dominated by black eyes set in yellow sclera shot with blood. He’s at least fifty, but he fills out his brown uniform like an NFL cornerback. Even at rest he radiates coiled energy.

“You were following me earlier tonight, right?”

The black eyes burn into mine with unsettling intensity. “Could have been,” he said in a gravelly voice.

“Ten seconds after you passed me, somebody shot up my car. You stopped. Why didn’t you help me?”

“I didn’t hear no shots. I saw you stop. I waited to make sure you started again. Why didn’t you report it if you was shot at?”

“What the hell is this about, Deputy? Why are you following me?”

He purses his lips and taps the steering wheel. “Get rid of your friend. Tell him I warned you off the Payton case, then go inside. After he leaves, meet me back out here.”

“Look, if this is about Del Payton—”

“This is about you, Penn Cage.” He spears me with a chilling stare. “And unfinished business.”

Unfinished business? A needle of fear pushes through my gut. Could he be talking about Ray Presley? Could he know something about what happened in Mobile in 1973? “Do you know a man named Ray Presley, Deputy?”

His jaw muscles flex into knots. “I know that motherfucker.”

“Does this have anything to do with him?”

“It might. You just be out here when I get back.”

He presses the accelerator, spinning me away from the car. After regaining my balance, I watch the cruiser disappear, then walk back to the driver’s window of the Hummer.

“What the hell was that about?” Sam asks.

“How many black sheriff’s deputies are there?”

“Nine or ten, I think. That was one of them?”

“Yeah. Fiftyish, but tough. Bald-headed.”

“Had to be Ike Ransom. You know him.”

“I do?”

“Ike the Spike. Remember?”

I do remember. Ike “the Spike” Ransom was a legendary football star at Thompson, the black high school, in the mid-sixties. He was so good that his exploits were trumpeted in the pages of the Examiner despite his skin color, and the records he set had held until Sam and I played ball ten years later.

“What the hell did Ike Ransom want here?” Sam asks.

“Same as everybody else. Warned me off the Payton case. I can’t believe Ike the Spike is a deputy. I figured he played pro football or something.”

Sam shrugs. “He was a cop first. After he put in his twenty there, he went to the sheriff’s department. He’s a bad son of a bitch, Penn. Even the blacks don’t like him.”

“What do you mean? He was a hero.”

“Ransom was one of the first black cops. I heard those guys had to prove they’d be tough on their own people to keep their jobs. Some people say Ransom was worse than white cops.”

“Great.”

Sam cranks the Hummer. “Forget Del Payton. Take care of your own. And if somebody fucks with you, give me a call. I can still pull your slack if you need me.”

I squeeze his shoulder. “Sounds like a plan. Thanks.”

He backs out of the driveway and roars away, the echoes reverberating off the houses on the silent street.