THE SHUDDER OF REVULSION

CHAPTER 1 – TUESDAY MORNING

Celester rested the heel of his left hand across the top of the steering wheel and stared through the windshield at the shiny ribbon of highway running northbound through an ocean of mid-summer cotton. The dark green leaves with a scattering of white and scarlet blossoms shimmered under a white sun in a nearly white, featureless sky. Random, light breezes ruffled the leafy tops of the plants like riffles across the surface of a lake.

“I think I’ll have ’que today,” Celester said.

The Captain, sitting beside him in the passenger seat, didn’t even look up from the newspaper he was reading. “Bull, you’ll have tamales, and you know it. We’d be going to Luby’s if we wanted ’que, and we ain’t going to Luby’s. Not today.”

Celester smiled to himself and pushed his dark glasses up with his right hand, his left hand still on the wheel. He had been in love with the cruiser, as he called it, ever since the Captain bought it for the sheriff’s department last fall, relished the way the power of the ’66 Chevy’s big V-8 radiated right up the steering column, through his arm and into his shoulder. Life could be good.

It was almost noon, just another July morning, a Tuesday, and like yesterday and the day before that, in fact every day for the last two months, already blazing hot, but Celester and the Captain were riding in smooth, air-conditioned comfort. Their mission to Clarksdale was a simple one: The Captain wanted tamales for lunch, and Abe’s was where they went for tamales. Celester liked them too, and although he couldn’t eat inside like the Captain, Viola would serve him an extra-large helping out the kitchen door around back.

The Captain slapped his newspaper closed and dropped it into his lap in disgust. He pulled off his wire-rimmed glasses and stared out of the cruiser’s window as row after row of cotton whipped past them.

“I swear to my dying day, I’ll never understand coloreds,” he snorted.

“I’m sitting right here, Cap’n.”

“Dangit, Celester, I know you are, and I know you know what I mean.”

The Captain snorted again as Celester shook his head in exasperation but with a hint of humor at the corner of his mouth.

“You just won’t do, Cap’n,” Celester said.

Celester peered through his dark glasses at the pavement stretched out ahead of them straight, flat, and true. They were just north of Isadore now, almost to Clarksdale, the regular thump of their tires on the seams in the pavement so commonplace it went unheard and unnoticed by either of them.

“What’s that in the paper got you riled up trying to understand colored folks?” Celester asked.

“That crazy fool down near Tchula that suspected his wife had herself a backdoor man. First, he beats the tar out of her. Then he gits liquored up and gets himself a gun, then he’s off to every juke joint down there north of town on 49 East, you know, the Ace of Spades, Ace of Hearts, all them, looking for this feller.”

The Captain reached down to fiddle with the air conditioner.

“Best thing they ever made for a car,” Celester noted.

“Ain’t it though,” the Captain added. “Soon as Crump called me to say this cruiser had come in, I asked him about one of these contraptions, and he made me, or I should say the county, a deal. It sure makes riding around in the Delta in the summertime delightful compared to the old days with the windows rolled down and nothing but hot air blowing in.”

“Amen to that,” Celester nodded.

The fan speed and vents adjusted, the Captain went on. “Well, finally this sport model finds the feller he’s looking for in the Ace of Aces and proceeds to empty the cylinder of some old cheap .32 caliber revolver. Seems two rounds hit the clown he was aiming at, shoulder and arm, though he’s expected to live.”

The Captain thumbed his hat back on his head. “Another round went into the thigh of the hoochie this feller was carrying on with. One winged the bartender, and the last round missed everybody and went right through the wall and busted out the windshield of Old Roosevelt Wiley’s car parked outside. Shoulda been home with his wife and family anyway. Now his Roosevelt’s name’s in the paper and his wife knows he wadn’t visiting his sick momma like he said but out carousing.”

The Captain chuckled at the last part.

“What’s so unusual bout that?” Celester asked. He hated to admit it but knew it was true.

“Nothing. Absolutely damn nothing,” the Captain replied. “And that’s the disheartening part. Colored folks just keep on doing that crazy sort of crap. I can kinda see walking in on your wife with another man and pulling out a gun, if one is handy, and shooting one or both of em in a jealous rage. Caught up in the moment, if you will. The law even allows that, although I only sorta agree with it.”

“You mean to say you wouldn’t at least shoot somebody if you found a man in bed with Miz Kathleen?”

“I’ll tell you, Celester, I don’t know what I’d do. At one time, I’d likely a shot somebody, probably him. After complimenting him on his taste in women.”

Celester just shook his head, a slight smile on his face. He had known the Captain all his life, had grown up fatherless in the Captain’s household, and had been his driver since he was 14 years old, but he still never knew what the old man might say next.

Tiffany Hollowell’s maid Essie sent her son Julius to wake up her mistress who had overslept even by her standards. Standing in the cool, dark hallway, Julius knocked softly on Miz Tiffany’s bedroom door. He didn’t like going to her bedroom in the first place. She made him uncomfortable, especially when she wasn’t all the way dressed. A colored boy like him could get in a lot of trouble looking at a white woman the wrong way, and sometimes Miz Tiffany made it hard not to look. She did it on purpose too, he thought. He shifted from foot to foot, and when there was no response, he reluctantly knocked a little louder.

Julius knocked harder and called Miz Tiffany’s name. Finally, in desperation, he turned the knob and eased the door open just enough to call out her name without really looking in. The foot of Miz Tiffany’s huge bed was bathed in dim morning light that filtered in through the thin drapes, but that was enough. Julius flung the door open, then recoiled. “Momma!” he choked out, then swallowing and taking a deep breath, he shouted, “Momma, come quick.”   

At her son’s shrill cry, Essie dropped the cloth she was using to wipe down the kitchen counter and with speed belying her size and age, scurried through the den and into the bedroom wing of the house. Julius was standing at the door to Miz Tiffany’s room. He looked pale and stricken. She took one look through the open door and gasped in disbelief.

“Lawd, have mercy,” she said under her breath. She grabbed Julius by the sleeve. “Come on. Come away from here, chile. That’s the Devil’s doings in that room.”

She dragged Julius down the hall. “’Side, we gots to call the shuriff. Cap’n’ll know what to do.”

It was quiet in the sheriff’s office with only the low hum of the rattling fan from the air conditioner in the ground-level window. Leander leaned his left elbow on the counter and cupped his chin in the palm of his left hand, fighting sleep as he flipped through the call log from the last couple of days. He was just about to nod off when the jangle of the telephone startled him so that his chin slipped out of his palm jerking him awake.

He grabbed for the receiver and lifted it to his ear. “Sheriff’s Office, Deputy Hollins speaking,” he said.

A confused rush of words tumbled out, but one thing quickly became clear, and he muttered, “Lord, have mercy,” in complete agreement with Essie.

Leander listened intently until Essie’s torrent of words finally subsided.

“Now, Essie, don’t do a thing, don’t touch a thing,” Leander said. “I’ll radio the Cap’n. He’ll be there as soon as he can.”

“Thank ya, Mistah Leander. We’ll be waiting. Please tell him to hurry,” she replied and hung up.

Leander cradled his head in both hands for a few moments, stunned, then reached for the radio.

“But there’s an added wrinkle to this here little escapade,” the Captain went on. “This sport model shot the wrong man. I mean he shot the man he was looking for, but it wadn’t the right man. Course nobody knew that at the time. He claimed his innocence as you might expect, but nobody knew he was innocent til in exasperation the wife in this fiasco let that little nugget slip out to Sheriff Tomlinson.”

The Captain paused to adjust his right knee, the one that had taken several pellets of double-aught buckshot from a bootlegger when Celester was only a boy.

“Knee bothering you today?” Celester asked.

“Ev’ry day for the last 19 years, but just a little stiffer today. Shame Old Doc Tate couldn’t take out all the pain when he took out the buckshot. Still, it usually only bothers me ev’ry other step.”

Celester chuckled to himself. He must have heard the Captain say that a thousand times.

 Comfortable again, the Captain continued, “Anyway, now this sport model’ll be picking cotton down on Parchman Farm while his wife’s back door man’ll be coming in the front door, and he still don’t know who that feller is. Knucklehead’s getting punished twice: once for the crime, once for sheer stupidity.”

Celester nodded. “That back door man, he been eating that other feller’s chicken. Guess he ain’t got nothing to worry bout til she starts feeding him pork and bean.” Celester chuckled.

“That what that means? I always wondered,” the Captain said and nodded.

“Yessir, she hold back the chicken for that man on the side. And all this has you puzzled because?” Celester asked again.

“Like I said, I can sorta understand a rash act in a moment of rage,” Captain said. “What I don’t understand is …”

The Captain was interrupted by the radio as it crackled to life. They were just now on the outskirts of Clarksdale. Celester glanced at the clock on the dashboard. The clock hands read 11:43.

“HQ to Patrol Cruiser 1. HQ to Patrol Cruiser 1.” Leander’s voice erupted from the speaker.

The Captain rolled his eyes and lifted the microphone. “Leander, this is the Cap’n. What’s is it?”

Celester allowed himself a flicker of a smile. There was a little bit of the Barney Fife in the Captain’s nephew. He’d seen enough Andy Griffith to know that. Leander sounded excited though, and that was unusual.

“Cap’n, you need to get out to the Hollowell place. Tiffany Hollowell has been killed.”

The Captain nodded at Celester. There was not a car in sight. Celester flipped on their blue lights under the grill but not the siren.

“Now settle down, Leander, and tell me what you know. Who called it in?” the Captain said.

Celester saw a turnoff into the cotton fields and slowed for his U-turn.

 “Hollowell Camp Road,” the Captain said softly.

“I reckon I know where the Hollowell place is,” Celester replied with a hint of exasperation. There wasn’t a vehicle in sight. He made the turn and pushed the cruiser up past 80.

The Captain ignored that. The radio crackled again.

“Essie. Her maid Essie. She called it in.” Leander sounded like he was out of breath.

Celester flipped on the siren as they neared the intersections at Oraien.

“Want to run down to Turner’s Landing to get on 321?” Celester asked.

“For the love of all that is holy, no. Cut through New Bethel and then over to 321,” the Captain replied.

“Quicker through Turner’s Landing,” Celester said and whipped the cruiser onto 49 East.

“Shorter my way. Now shut up and drive.” The Captain wasn’t mad. He just wanted to think, not talk.

The bright yellow flash of a crop duster climbing up into the pale blue sky caught Celester’s eye as the sped by Throckmorton’s airstrip off to the right.

“Maybe,” he muttered, and the Captain slapped him with the paper again.

“Cap’n?” It was Leander again. He still sounded breathless. “Cap’n.” 

The Captain keyed the mike.

“Leander, for heaven’s sake, Son, breathe.”

There was a pause and Leander’s voice came back over the radio.

“Essie says she looked all over and cain’t find the little girl.”

“Oh, Lord,” the Captain sighed.

Celester slowed to turn off towards New Bethel and looked over at the old man he had known all of his life. The Captain’s normally tan face looked pale.

“Seems like it ain’t just colored folks doing crazy crap these days,” Celester said softly, not in rebuke, but because it was true, and they both knew it.

The Captain took the comment for what it was, and added, “No, it ain’t limited to coloreds. Never has been. Not since Cain slew Abel anyway.”

Celester glanced over again. The Captain’s broad shoulders were slumped. He looked suddenly tired. But then the Captain wasn’t a young man, not anymore. In fact, his hair was nearly all white now. He’d be 65 soon, had been sheriff for nigh 40 years. The Captain extended a weary hand, and Celester took the mike from it.

“Have Leander call Katiebelle and let her know we may be late,” the Captain said. “And we won’t be bringing her no tamales.” He turned again to stare out the window. “Better have Leander call over to the hospital in Panola and have em send an ambulance too. No siren once they hit the driveway. No need to stir folks up.”

“And call Willis to have him meet us there, I guess. But tell him not to touch anything,” the Captain added.