At eight o’clock, he told Nineva he was going to town and asked if she needed anything. She did not, and he left the front porch with Mack behind him. He opened the door to his new 1946 Ford pickup, and Mack jumped onto the passenger’s side of the bench seat. Mack rarely missed a ride to town and today would be no different, at least for the dog.
The Banning home, a splendid Colonial Revival built by Pete’s parents before the crash in 1929, sat on Highway 18, south of Clanton. The county road had been paved the year before with postwar federal money. The locals believed that Pete had used his clout to secure the funding, but it wasn’t true.
Clanton was four miles away, and Pete drove slowly, as always. There was no traffic, except for an occasional mule-drawn trailer laden with cotton and headed for the gin. A few of the county’s larger farmers, like Pete, owned tractors, but most of the hauling was still done by mules, as were the plowing and planting. All picking was by hand. The John Deere and International Harvester corporations were trying to perfect mechanized pickers that would supposedly one day eliminate the need for so much manual labor, but Pete had his doubts. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered but the task at hand.
Cotton blown from the trailers littered the shoulders of the highway. Two sleepy-eyed colored boys loitered by a field road and waved as they admired his truck, one of two new Fords in the county. Pete did not acknowledge them. He lit a cigarette and said something to Mack as they entered the town.
Near the courthouse square he parked in front of the post office and watched the foot traffic come and go. He wished to avoid people he knew, or those who might know him, because after the killing any witnesses were apt to offer such banal observations as “I saw him and he seemed perfectly normal,” while the next one might say, “Bumped into him at the post office and he had a deranged look about him.” After a tragedy, those with even the slightest connections to it often exaggerate their involvement and importance.
He eased from his truck, walked to the letter box, and mailed the envelope to his wife. Driving away, he circled the courthouse, with its wide, shaded lawn and gazebos, and had a vague image of what a spectacle his trial might be. Would they haul him in with handcuffs? Would the jury show sympathy? Would his lawyers work some magic and save him? Too many questions with no answers. He passed the Tea Shoppe, where the lawyers and bankers held forth each morning over scalding coffee and buttermilk biscuits, and wondered what they would say about the killing. He avoided the coffee shop because he was a farmer and had no time for the idle chitchat.
Let them talk. He expected little sympathy from them or from anyone else in the county for that matter. He cared nothing for sympathy, sought no understanding, had no plans to explain his actions. At the moment, he was a soldier with orders and a mission to carry out.
He parked on a quiet street a block behind the Methodist church. He got out, stretched his legs for a moment, zipped up his barn jacket, told Mack that he would return shortly, and began walking toward the church his grandfather had helped build seventy years earlier. It was a short walk, and along the way he saw no one. Later, no one would claim to have seen him.
* * *
—
The Reverend Dexter Bell had been preaching at the Clanton Methodist Church since three months before Pearl Harbor. It was the third church of his ministry, and he would have been rotated onward like all Methodist preachers but for the war. Shortages in the ranks had caused a shifting of duties, an upsetting of schedules. Normally, in the Methodist denomination, a minister lasted only two years in one church, sometimes three, before being reassigned. Reverend Bell had been in Clanton for five years and knew it was only a matter of time before he was called to move on. Unfortunately, the call did not arrive in time.
He was sitting at his desk in his office, in an annex behind the handsome sanctuary, alone as usual on Wednesday morning. The church secretary worked only three afternoons each week. The reverend had finished his morning prayers, had his study Bible open on his desk, along with two reference books, and was contemplating his next sermon when someone knocked on his door. Before he could answer, the door swung open, and Pete Banning walked in, frowning and filled with purpose.
Surprised at the intrusion, Bell said, “Well, good morning, Pete.” He was about to stand when Pete whipped out a pistol with a long barrel and said, “You know why I’m here.”
Bell froze and gawked in horror at the weapon and barely managed to say, “Pete, what are you doing?”
“I’ve killed a lot of men, Preacher, all brave soldiers on the field. You’re the first coward.”
“Pete, no, no!” Dexter said, raising his hands and falling back into his chair, eyes wide and mouth open. “If it’s about Liza, I can explain. No, Pete!”
Pete took a step closer, aimed down at Dexter, and squeezed the trigger. He had been trained as a marksman with all firearms, and had used them in battle to kill more men than he cared to remember, and he had spent his life in the woods hunting animals large and small. The first shot went through Dexter’s heart, as did the second. The third entered his skull just above the nose.
Within the walls of a small office, the shots boomed like cannon fire, but only two people heard them. Dexter’s wife, Jackie, was alone in the parsonage on the other side of the church, cleaning the kitchen when she heard the noise. She later described it as the muffled sounds of someone clapping hands three times, and, at the moment, had no idea it was gunfire. She couldn’t possibly have known her husband had just been murdered.
Hop Purdue had been cleaning the church for twenty years. He was in the annex when he heard the shots that seemed to shake the building. He was standing in the hallway outside the pastor’s study when the door opened and Pete walked out, still holding the pistol. He raised it, aimed it at Hop’s face, and seemed ready to fire. Hop fell to his knees and pleaded, “Please, Mista Banning. I ain’t done nothin’. I got kids, Mista Banning.”
Pete lowered the gun and said, “You’re a good man, Hop. Go tell the sheriff.”
Chapter 2
Standing in the side door, Hop watched Pete walk away, calmly putting the pistol in his jacket pocket as he went. When he was out of sight, Hop shuffled—his right leg was two inches shorter than his left—back to the study, eased through the open door, and studied the preacher. His eyes were closed and his head was slumped to one side, with blood dripping down his nose. Behind his head there was a mess of blood and matter splattered on the back of his chair. His white shirt was turning red around his chest, and his chest was not moving. Hop stood there for a few seconds, maybe a minute, maybe longer, to make sure there was no movement. He realized there was nothing he could do to help him. The pungent odor of gunpowder hung heavy in the room and Hop thought he might vomit.
Because he was the nearest Negro he figured he would get blamed for something. Stricken with fear and afraid to move, he touched nothing and managed to slowly back out of the room. He closed the door and began sobbing. Preacher Bell was a gentle man who had treated him with respect and shown concern for his family. A fine man, a family man, a loving man who was adored by his church. Whatever he had done to offend Mr. Pete Banning was certainly not worth his life.