Greg Iles - The Devils Punchbowl

“Please, Lord, help me,” she whimpers in the dead air of the kennel. “Please send me an angel. I'm too sick to help myself. I can’t do no more.”

CHAPTER

38

Caitlin has not come to Tim’s funeral. This morning she called and told me that the way to honor Tim’s life was not to grieve in a church, but to carry on his work. If we couldn'’t do that, she said, she couldn'’t bear to sit in the cathedral and dishonor his memory. When I asked what she intended to do instead, she said she was going down to the newspaper office to think about all that had happened and to try to make some decisions about her future. Her tone made it plain I was not to be a part of this process.

Skipping the funeral wasn'’t an option for me; I'm a pallbearer. Eight of us are sitting behind the Jessup family in the center pews of St. Mary’s, a beautiful Gothic Revival cathedral built in 1843. Most pallbearers in Natchez are old men grown too frail to carry their dead friends, but today I'm seated among seven strapping boys I went to high school with—men now, of course—who have flown in from every corner of the country. Los Angeles, Chicago, Wisconsin, Oregon, Atlanta, D.C., other places. To my surprise and relief, not one man that Tim’s father asked to perform this duty made an excuse not to show. More surprising, at least twenty-five people from our senior class are present, and most have traveled far to be here. Since we had only thirty-two students in our graduating class, this is a significant percentage. Earlier, we held a sort of unofficial reunion outside the cathedral, trading updates on kids, careers, class

gossip. After we pallbearers received our instructions inside, a couple of my old friends asked some pointed questions about what had brought us all together. I told them only that Tim had lost his life while trying to help the city, and that he’d transformed that life before he died.

After the processional was complete, I was amazed to find St. Mary’s filled nearly to capacity. I had worried that, like his wake, Tim’s funeral would draw few mourners, but it seems that a decision has been taken by the congregation to support Tim and his family despite the poison being spread by Charlotte McQueen. These people understand that one of their children could easily have killed someone during a drunken drive to the county line during college, as Tim did, and only the grace of God spared them such a tragedy. The Catholics in Natchez have always seemed to me a great extended family, and they'’re proving it today.

Father Mullen made the right choice in the end: Tim is getting the full Catholic funeral mass. This, along with the presence of my friends and the large turnout, warmed my heart initially. But as the ritual proceeds, that warmth slowly dissipates in the vaulted vastness of the cathedral. Father Mullen, dressed in white vestments, begins a reading through coughs and throat clearings and the stifled cries of infants. He’s chosen a passage from 2 Timothy, one that has more relevance than the name of the book.

“Remember the gospel that I carry, ‘Jesus Christ risen from the dead, sprung from the race of David’: it is on account of this that I have to put up with suffering, even to being chained like a criminal. But God’s message cannot be chained up. So I persevere for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they, too, may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. Here is a saying that you can rely on: If we have died with him, then we shall live with him. If we persevere, then we shall reign with him. If we disown him, then he will disown us.”

Perhaps my private testimonial to Tim’s heroism moved Father Mullen to be brave. As the priest continues, my gaze drops from his face to the heads and shoulders of the family in front of me. Dr. and Mrs. Jessup are as shattered as any parents whose child precedes them in death. Julia sits beside them with the baby on her lap, bereft and bewildered. She has not made eye contact with me today,

though we’ve stood only a few feet apart more than once. But now her son peeks over her shoulder and finds my eyes, his own filled with bemused innocence. I search for the father in the boy’s face, but where I find Tim is twenty feet closer to the altar, in the gleaming bronze casket I will soon help carry to the cemetery where we met on the night before he was murdered.

That night, Tim told me not to blame myself if anything happened to him. But today the very silence of his closed coffin seems a screaming indictment of all my recent failures. Am I the only one who hears it? I probably look normal, even detached, to those assembled here. But inside, a storm of emotion is slowly gathering force. Here in this mystical atmosphere of candles and incense and holy water, other things Tim said that night come back with the accusatory weight of deathbed charges. I had promised the people so much, he reminded me. How could I consider walking away from a battle I’d scarcely even joined? The silent echo of his words makes me bow my head in shame, and with shame comes anger and resentment.

Stealing a covert glance at the disinterested faces behind me, I wonder how these people would react if I resigned as mayor. They know nothing of the actions of Jonathan Sands, or of the threat posed by the

Magnolia Queen.

My stepping down would send a short-lived wave of gossip through the city, and then someone else would take over the job. Life would go on as before. Many in these pews would be happy to see me go. Several among them fiercely resisted my early efforts to change the educational system in Natchez, as one would expect from a group that supports a strong Catholic school. And all pointed out the contradiction of my preaching a move to the public schools while supporting my alma mater, which is private.

Despite his bold reading, Father Mullen’s homily is vague and aimed squarely at the faithful in the pews. He might have written it specifically not to offend Charlotte McQueen. As he speaks, I sense melancholy regret in the crowd, but not the dazed sorrow people usually feel at the funeral of a man in his forties. Most here today—certainly my peers—always expected Tim Jessup to die young, probably long before now. Except for the lingering questions about how he died, there’s a sense of anticlimax about this ceremony. As people kneel and sit and stand as though controlled by a central computer,

I feel a wild urge to stand, take the pulpit, and do what Dr. Jessup has probably given up hope that I will do—tell the truth about Tim’s life and death.

But what would it accomplish? Would these people rise as one, march down Silver Street, and drag Sands and Quinn off the boat to face a rough justice? Would they burn the

Magnolia Queen

where she lies? Such things have happened in Natchez before. Games of chance and horse racing were always popular here, among both the aristocracy on the bluff and the riff-raff below. But in 1835, when the organized gamblers of Vicksburg fled to Natchez Under-the-Hill after several of their number were hanged, prominent Natchez attorney John Quitman led a group of citizens down Silver Street, rounded up the offenders, flogged them savagely, and drove them out of town. Such “clean outs” occurred regularly in the old days, and sometimes involved more than horsewhips. But no similar uprising would happen today. Such things are left to the police now. If the authorities don'’t pursue a case, people assume there’s no real wrongdoing, at least none they need concern themselves about.

My frustration feels alien after the buoyant exaltation I experienced outside the cathedral, where my old classmates expressed endless admiration for my work as mayor. Seeing so many boyhood friends gathered together was a shock to my system—a different kind of shock than those I’'ve endured for the past few days, but a shock nonetheless. For two years, I’'ve received a steady stream of calls and e-mails expressing thanks and respect for my commitment to the town. All have written or spoken of how much they miss Natchez, and how badly they would like to return. I never doubted their sincerity, at least during their nostalgic moments. But the fact is, almost none