“No interrogation, you understand?”
Banning said, “I have nothing to say.”
* * *
—
Florry read the note on her front porch as Nineva and Amos watched. They were still panting from their sprint from the main house and horrified at what was happening.
When she finished she lowered it, looked at them, and asked, “And he’s gone?”
“The law took him, Miss Florry,” Nineva said. “He knew they were comin’ to get him.”
“Did he say anything?”
“He said he done kilt the preacher,” Nineva replied, wiping her cheeks.
The note instructed Florry to call Joel at Vanderbilt and Stella at Hollins and explain to them that their father had been arrested for the murder of the Reverend Dexter Bell. They were to speak to no one about this, especially reporters, and they were to stay away at college until further notice. He was sorry for this tragic turn of events but hopeful that one day they would understand. He asked Florry to visit him the following day at the jail to discuss matters.
She felt faint but could show no weakness in front of the help. She folded the note, stuck it in a pocket, and dismissed them. Nineva and Amos backed away, more frightened and confused than before, and slowly walked across her front yard to the trail. She watched them until they were out of sight, then sat in a wicker rocker with one of her cats and fought her emotions.
He had certainly seemed preoccupied at breakfast, only a few hours earlier, but then he had not been right since the war. Why hadn’t he warned her? How could he do something so unbelievably evil? What would happen to him, his children, his wife? To her, his only sibling? And the land?
Florry was far from a devout Methodist, but she had been raised in the church and attended occasionally. She had learned to keep her distance from the ministers because they were gone by the time they’d settled in, but Bell was one of the better ones.
She thought of his pretty wife and children, and finally broke down. Marietta eased through the screen door and stood beside her as she sobbed.
Chapter 3
The town descended upon the Methodist church. As the crowd grew, a deacon told Hop to unlock the sanctuary. The stricken mourners filed in and filled the pews and whispered the latest, whatever that happened to be. They prayed and wept and wiped their faces and shook their heads in disbelief. The faithful members, those who knew Dexter well and loved him dearly, clung together in small groups and moaned in their suffering. For the less committed, those who attended monthly but not weekly, the church was a magnet that drew them as close as possible to the tragedy. Even some of the truly backslidden arrived to share in the suffering. At that awful moment, everyone was a Methodist and welcomed in Reverend Bell’s church.
The murder of their preacher was emotionally and physically overwhelming. The fact that he had been killed by one of their own was, initially, too astonishing to believe. Joshua Banning, Pete’s grandfather, had helped build the church. His father had been a deacon his entire adult life. Most of those present had sat in those same pews and offered countless prayers for Pete during the war. They had been devastated when the news arrived from the War Department that he was presumed dead. They had held candlelight vigils at his second coming. They had rejoiced in tears when he and Liza made their grand reentry the week after the Japanese surrendered. Every Sunday morning during the war, Reverend Bell had called out the names of soldiers from Ford County and offered a special prayer. First on his list was Pete Banning, the town’s hero and the source of immense local pride. Now the rumor that he had murdered their preacher was simply too incredible to absorb.
But as the news sank in, the whispering intensified, in some circles anyway, and the great question of “Why?” was asked a thousand times. Only a few of the bravest dared to suggest that Pete’s wife had something to do with it.
What the mourners really wanted was to get their hands on Jackie and the children, to touch them and have a good cry, as if that would soften their shock. But Jackie, according to the gossip, was next door in the parsonage, secluded in her bedroom with her three children, and seeing no one. The house was packed with her closest friends and the crowd spilled out onto the porches and across the front yard, where grim-faced men smoked and grumbled. When friends stepped outside for fresh air, others stepped inside to take their places. Still others moved next door to the sanctuary.
The stricken and the curious continued to come, and the streets around the church were lined with cars and trucks. Folks drifted toward the church in small groups, moving slowly as if they weren’t sure what they would do when they got there but were needed nonetheless.
When the pews were packed, Hop opened the door to the balcony. He hid in the shadows below the belfry and avoided everyone. Sheriff Gridley had threatened him and he was saying nothing. He did marvel, though, at the way the white folks managed to keep their composure, most of them anyway. The slaying of a popular black preacher would provoke an outpouring far more chaotic.
A deacon suggested to Miss Emma Faye Riddle that some music might be appropriate. She had played the organ for decades, but wasn’t sure if the occasion was right. She soon agreed, though, and when she hit the first notes of “The Old Rugged Cross,” the weeping intensified.
Outside, under the trees, a man approached a group of smokers and announced, “They got Pete Banning in jail. Got his gun too.” This was met with acceptance, commented on, then passed along until the news entered the sanctuary, where it spread from pew to pew.
Pete Banning, arrested for the murder of their preacher.
* * *
—
When it became obvious that the suspect indeed had nothing to say, Sheriff Gridley led him through a door and into a narrow hallway with little light. Iron bars lined both sides. There were three cells on the right, three on the left, each about the size of a walk-in closet. There were no windows and the jail felt like a damp, dark dungeon, a place where men were forgotten and time went unnoticed. And, evidently, a place where everyone smoked. Gridley stuck a large key into a door, pulled it open, and nodded for the suspect to step inside. A cheap cot was at the far wall, and there was nothing else in the way of furnishings.
Gridley said, “Not much room, I’m afraid, Pete, but then it is a jail, after all.”
Pete stepped inside, glanced around, and said, “I’ve seen worse.” He stepped to the cot and sat on it.
“Bathroom’s down the hall,” Gridley said. “If you need to use it, just yell.”
Pete was staring at the floor. He shrugged, said nothing. Gridley slammed the door and returned to his office. Pete stretched out and consumed the full length of his cot. He was two inches over six feet; the cot was not quite that long. The cell was musty and cold and he picked up a folded blanket, one that was practically threadbare and would be of little use at night. He didn’t care. Captivity was nothing new, and he had survived conditions that now, four years later, were still hard to imagine.