Chapter 38 #5
At eleven o’clock the next morning, Esmeralda drove me in the direction of the Lafayette County Jail. She’d covered her hair with a black scarf and didn’t speak much on the way. At Washington Avenue, she stopped, two blocks short of the jailhouse.
“You mind walking the rest of the way?” she asked. I saw dark stains blooming under the arms of her white silk blouse.
“Not at all. I can walk home after I talk to him, no need to wait.” I’d hardly shut the car door when she sped off, taking the first right. She didn’t even want to drive past the jailhouse.
This morning, I’d dressed like my old self, blue dress number two with my brown-and-white oxfords.
I let my brown hair fall lank at my shoulders, one side pulled back with a simple cheap clip.
No lipstick on this outing. Except for the thinner eyebrows, I felt like Frances’s spinster sister from the Delta again, plain and deflated.
I’d never been inside a jail before and prayed to Jesus I wouldn’t be staying long in this one.
My heart beat at double speed as I approached the two-story brick building.
The front porch was held up by thin posts, and on the second floor, a grid of heavy iron covered the center window.
The other windows were bricked in. I took a deep breath and went up the steps. Don’t think about it, just go.
I pulled the door open and entered a dim vestibule.
A single bulb printed my shadow on a closed staircase on the right.
A sign pointed upward with the word Jail.
I thought of Charlie spending those interminable nights here, absolutely worried sick about Meg.
A dull-eyed fellow at a desk looked up, a reminder that there was not enough crime in Oxford to keep a clerk awake.
“Hello, I’m Birdie Calhoun, here to speak to the sheriff?” My voice shook and I cleared my throat. “I telephoned this morning.” Before the clerk could stand up, Sheriff Porter walked in.
He was a small man, shorter than me and wiry, around forty.
I remembered his loud, nasally voice from that first lunch with Jack, and how Jack had said he’d enjoyed throwing people out of their homes “a little too much.” He was dressed in full khaki issue with sharp-toed boots, his hair neatly slicked back.
He gave me the impression that he was still trying to make his mother proud.
“’Mon back, Miss Calhoun,” he said. Charlie had prepared me for this visit, but I was vibrating with nerves.
He walked me briskly to a larger room. The walls were a yellowish body-fluid color that reminded me of parts of the Orphan and grew dirtier toward the floor.
At his desk, he pulled his pants up higher and motioned me to sit across from him.
“Thank you so much for seeing me this morning,” I said. I was sitting on the edge of my chair, holding Frances’s wicker handbag in my lap with my white-gloved hands. “And please call me Birdie. Birdie Calhoun.”
“You’re not from around here, ’sat right?” he asked, leaning back in his squeaky chair.
“No, sir. I’m from the Delta, up here visiting my sister awhile.” I thought “visiting” sounded nice and temporary, like I’d be leaving soon.
He pointed two fingers at me. “But you been staying out at the Tartts’ while they’re outta town? At Idlewilde?”
He wanted me to know he knew that. “That’s right, sir.”
“I understand they’re having some trouble out there. Due, in part, to the son, Rory Tartt?” He was not smiling.
So he’d heard that—but “trouble” did not seem to mean what it could.
Charlie had run me through a likely script, assuming he’d know this.
I knew the sheriff attended foreclosure auctions and maybe even kept abreast of them from the banks.
“They are having financial trouble, yes,” I said.
“It’s been awful hard on Mrs. Tartt, and that’s why I’m here. ”
We both waited. Either for me to tell him why I was here or, worse, for him to tell me why I was here.
I continued. “I came to let you know that we’ve opened up a little dance place out at the Tartts’ to earn some money for Mrs. Tartt. We took in some boarders too, who give the dance lessons. I thought it best you know that.”
He smiled, and it looked smug to me. “Oh, I know all about that place, Miss Calhoun.” My stomach muscles tightened.
He opened his desk drawer and, with a sharp snap, set a card on the desk.
I leaned up to look, dreading it, and indeed, it was one of my sister’s repurposed calling cards, information side up, with the hours and the words men only—why had someone put that on there?
No address, for obvious reasons, and no telephone number, so he’d had it a while, since before we’d gotten the private telephone line.
I thought about the suspicious car showing up as far back as the first big night—had he been watching us that long?
“Well I … guess you do, then,” was all I could manage to say, and I realized I was staring at the billy club on his desk, with its shiny black knob. A high note, ringing in my head, got higher.
He threw his feet up on the desk, so now I was looking at the dirty soles of his boots. Leaning back, he thatched his fingers behind his head. “Not but whites dancing out there now, m’I correct?” he asked.
“Yes—yes, sir. That is correct,” I said.
“No mixing, it’s a felony in this state.”
I nodded that I knew.
“No playing race records either, ’at’s where it starts.”
“No, sir,” I said, shaking my head. He’d now asked about mixing three different ways. “Only coloreds out there are the band players.”
Sweat dripped down my back while he fixed his eyes on me. Was he telling me these were the rules to run a brothel in his town or just a dance business? I didn’t know, so I started babbling everything Charlie and I had rehearsed.
“Just so you know, if anybody brings liquor in, we don’t allow it.” This was true, though Charlie hadn’t had the nerve to take it away from anybody yet.
He nodded.
“Also we don’t operate on Sundays, on account of blue laws.” I cleared my throat. “No business on the Lord’s day—” The telephone rang on his desk, and the clerk up front answered it. The sheriff tilted his head to hear.
“And like I said, we don’t play any race records.” Wait, he’d asked that one already.
“Sheriff,” the clerk said, appearing in the doorway, “it’s about the warrant.”
He smiled, lips only. “If that’ll be all, I got a important call, darlin’.”
I stared at him, my ears ringing—this wasn’t resolved, it wasn’t anywhere near resolved.
He stood up and it took me a moment to make myself stand up too.
As I reached to take the card from his desk, he snatched it up and looked me in the eyes, hard.
Then he said, “I’ll be coming out for a visit soon.
Hank, show her out.” And I followed the clerk to the front.
I took a taxi home, dazed and sweaty with failure.
Esmeralda met me in the front sitting room with Charlie on her heels. “What did he say? Did he know anything?”
“Not much.” I pulled my gloves off, finger by finger, and tried to smile. I wasn’t sure how to answer that, because—what had I even learned? Almost nothing, but something was off with that sheriff. Like Jack had said, he seemed to enjoy my discomfort a little too much.
Esmeralda came closer and said very carefully, “What did he say?”
“He had a card, an old one. But all he cared about was if coloreds and whites were mixing. He said he planned to come out here for a visit soon.”
Esmeralda looked up at the high ceiling.
“We are shooting ourselves in the foot staying open another ten days, Charlie. Look, I understand you want to make more money, but it’s not worth the risk.
If the sheriff shows up here, he will arrest us and take every cent we’ve made and Lord knows what else. ”
I stayed quiet, but I knew she was right: We needed to close, much sooner than that.
Nostrils flared, Charlie looked Esmeralda directly in the eye and said, “I’m telling you, the sheriff does not know. If he did, he’d be here, right now, arresting all of us and enjoying every minute of it. And if he does come, we’ll be ready.”
There was a good long staring contest between the two of them. In the hall, the telephone rang. “Fine, one more week, but that’s it,” Esmeralda said.
I went and answered it before somebody else could.
“Long-distance call from Gulfport,” a woman said. “A Mrs. Frances Tartt asking to reverse the charges. Do you accept?”
“Yes—yes, I accept.”
“Birdie, oh Birdie …” She was weeping into the receiver.
“Franny, are you alright? Are you hurt?”
“I found Rory. He’s in Biloxi.” She sounded physically sick. “He’s gone off the deep end, Birdie, he’s in jail.”
“Jail for what? What else did he do?”
“It’s a whole bunch of charges they’ve got on him.
” She sobbed again and then took a deep, trembling breath.
“After I checked all the big hotels, I started calling around to hospitals. The one in Gulfport said to try Biloxi since it’s only fifteen miles away, and …
I guess word got out that Rory Tartt’s wife was looking for him and the police telephoned me.
He hit a policeman, Birdie, with the Studebaker. ”
“Did he … kill him? Was it intentional?” I didn’t really care about Rory, I cared about my little sister, who sounded scared to death right now.
“No, no, the policeman will be fine, thank goodness, but Rory’s in serious trouble.
He was drunk and trying to get away from some sort of party that the police broke up.
” She took another breath and her voice steadied a little.
“Some of the other men that were there got arrested too—I don’t even know how he met these people. ”
“I’m so sorry, Franny. When did this happen?”
“Around three o’clock this morning. They’re charging him with assaulting an officer, resisting arrest, and some other charges I don’t really understand.”
“What kind of charges?”