Уинстон Грум - Alabama Noir

Jackie grinned. “Try your luck, asshole.”

Merle turned his attention to the gallon glass jugs in the trunk. He lifted one and looked through the clear liquid. “You ain’t got your daddy’s manners but you inherited his touch with a still. Never knew a girl could cook mash like you.”

“You want it, haul it out of my trunk after I have the money.”

Merle counted out the bills in twenties. He handed her the cash and then lifted the moonshine out of the trunk. He made eight trips to the ramshackle building that sold bait, fishing gear, rented boats, and also offered white lightning to trusted customers. Jackie leaned against the side of the car and watched him work.

“Your daddy always helped carry it in,” Merle said as he hefted two more gallons.

“My daddy was a good man. He died about thirty yards from where I’m standing. Being good didn’t matter a bit to the man who shot him.”

Merle shook his head. “That eats at you long enough, you’re gonna be shittin’ in a bag.”

“Thanks for the medical advice.” She slammed the trunk. The rear of the car still sank low to the white shells of the parking lot.

“Jackie, there’s no undoing what happened to your daddy. I don’t know who shot him, and fact is, I wouldn’t tell you if I knew. You gone get yourself hurt. There’re mean and powerful people out there. They’ll shoot you too.”

“If I thought you knew, I’d see that you told me.”

Merle slammed the trunk hard. “See you in a week.”

“My date with destiny.” She got behind the wheel, closed the door, and spun out onto the two lanes of the causeway that connected Mobile and Baldwin counties. The bay ruffled on her left, and the marshlands and rivers on her right. In ten minutes, she was cutting under the Mobile River via Bankhead Tunnel, a span of roadway that made her feel like she was in the belly of a snake. When she shot up into the light and sun again, she was in downtown Mobile.

She snapped the radio back on.

“God offers sinners the perfect miracle, absolute redemption. Even those who have died and are moldering in the ground, awaiting Judgment Day, can be helped. God wants to love and forgive. I can intercede with God on behalf of those you love, those awaiting final judgment, those who will live eternally in the fiery lake of hell if you don’t take action. Cash, check, or money order will do. Don’t let the flames of damnation lick the flesh of those you love. Send twenty-five dollars right now and the name of the person I need to pray for. God hears me, and He listens. Let me save the ones you love from eternal hellfire.”

The city had begun to awaken as she drove past the businesses and houses, many sporting evidence of the long occupation of the city by the French and Spanish. Wrought-iron balconies, stucco, windows that opened wide and were used as doors, the patio entrances that led back to what had once been stables and elegant bricked courtyards. This was Mobile, all shaded by the monster live oaks she loved.

When she passed the small, cinder-block AM radio station, WRED, she pulled to the curb and stopped. Brother Fred March was inside, doing his live radio show. She recognized his brand-new black Cadillac parked right at the front door. The morning deejay who ran the station was playing a gospel song, “Jesus Is Coming Soon” by the Oakridge Boys.

For the next half hour, she watched the squirrels run up the live oak trees and listened to Brother Fred.

“The Lord Jesus carries your sins every day. He can wash you clean and intercede for those who have gone before you. Here’s that address again. Cash, check, or money order and the name of the person I should pray for.”

The show always ended with “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” Before the song had even finished, the door of the radio station opened and Brother Fred stepped into the October sunlight. Tall with wide shoulders, he was a handsome man with his pomaded black hair. Before the ministry, he’d been a dock worker. Ten years of hard labor had given him a physical presence. Greed had given him the golden ticket of fleecing the desperate.

March lit a cigarette and a big diamond on his finger glinted. He didn’t even glance at the old Plymouth across the street.

Brother Fred wasn’t a very perceptive man, but to be on the safe side, Jackie had put on sunglasses and a scarf to hide her white-blond hair. She watched the radio evangelist pull hard on his cigarette and then flick the butt into the grass. He walked around the car and she took note of his fancy suit and cowboy boots. They were made of ostrich and cost a pretty penny, but God wanted him to have them. Brother Fred said so on the radio, and his flock had ponied up the bucks to buy them.

The evangelist left the radio station in a spray of gravel. Jackie waited a minute, then fell in behind him, heading west. The minister’s Cadillac cut through the October morning like God’s black missile. Brother Fred paid no heed to speed limits, which forced Jackie to do the same. When he turned into a new subdivision of brick ranch-style homes on the outskirts of Mobile, she passed the entrance, then returned, cruising until she found his car parked halfway behind a redbrick house with gray shutters. She brought the camera with a telephoto lens from the backseat just as March got out of the Caddy and knocked on the front door.

The woman who opened it wore a flimsy white negligee and a big red smile. March swept her into his arms and hurried inside, but not before Jackie had half a dozen photos.

The newsroom of the Mobile Register was already filled with cigarette smoke when she clanked out of the decrepit old elevator and went to her desk in State News. She was little more than a cub reporter. She typed up the columns from far-flung community correspondents, wrote obits, helped the back shop proofread legal notices and the classified ads. When none of the male reporters were available, she sometimes got to pursue a crime story. Her boss said she had a flair for sniffing out stories.

At her corner desk she began to type Octavia Fairley’s community column and four obituaries. At least she didn’t have to write weddings. Her boss came out of a meeting.

“I’m done with my work. Can I go to the darkroom?” She pushed her rolling chair away from her desk and stood.

Clint assessed her for a moment. “Somebody dug up a grave over in Wilmer. You want to check it out, Hepburn?”

Clint was a big fan of old movies and Katherine Hepburn was a favorite. She already had her car keys in hand and her purse on her shoulder. “Address?”

She’d grown up on the west side of Mobile County and she knew every back road. The cemetery wasn’t that far from where she lived. “I’ll be back after lunch.”

“Jackie, were you out on the causeway this morning?”

She stopped in the doorway, debating whether to lie or not. Bootlegging wasn’t an approved hobby for newspaper employees. “Yeah, I was.”

Clint sat down at his desk. “I know your father’s death eats at you, but you need to let it go. If you don’t, you’ll end up bitter and unhappy.”

A smart-aleck retort came to her, but she stopped. “Thanks, Clint. I am trying.” She walked through the newsroom, ignoring the elevator, and took the stairs down to the lobby and out into the sunshine.

A solitary sheriff’s deputy stood over the open grave in the middle of a small church cemetery. The body had been buried only two days before. Now the coffin had been opened and the body taken. Latter-day grave robbers.

“Who was she, Sandy?” There was no headstone. The grave was too raw.

“Cornelia Swanson, high school senior. Auto accident. It’s killing her folks.” Deputy Sandy Stewart backed away from the grave and stopped in the shade of a big live oak. It was the only bit of beauty in the sad little cemetery.