“I’m surprised you had the nerve to walk in here,” he says. “White boy like you in a black jook? Out on the edge of nowhere? Most white boys would be nervous as a whore in church.”
“I’d be a lot more nervous in a shitkicking honky-tonk. People come here for the food and the music.”
Turner chuckles. “You’re right. When rednecks drink, they want to fuck or fight, and not necessarily in that order.”
I want to ask him what he was doing outside my house earlier this afternoon, but that might force our conversation to an abrupt conclusion. Better to learn what I can before confronting him. “I didn’t even know this place existed.”
He looks around as though appraising the value of the place. “When I was a boy in Chicago, there were jooks like this on the South Side. No name, usually, just an address. Mississippi folks who moved up there re-created what they’d known back home. My stepfather did a lot of his business in corner jook joints. He’d sit there eating pork sausage and cat-head biscuits, running half a dozen scams from the pay phone while he ate. I guess I got to like it. The funk of it, you know?”
My stepfather. I try to recall what Dad told me about the man Viola married in Chicago. The phrase “charming rogue” comes back to me.
“I know why you’re here,” Lincoln says, his dark eyes suddenly serious. “I see you studyin’ my face.”
“Why don’t you enlighten me?”
“No. I’ll let you tell your lie before I tell the truth. Why do you think you’re here?”
“I came to find out why you’re trying to railroad my father for murder.”
He shakes his head with confidence. “That’s no mystery. What son wouldn’t want vengeance on the man who killed his mama? That’s logic, plain and simple. No, Mr. Mayor … you’re here to answer a deeper question. And you’re scared.”
“What were you doing parked outside my house an hour ago?”
Lincoln shrugs. “It’s a free country, ain’t it?”
“Oh, cut the shit. What ‘deeper question’ am I here to answer?”
He seems to weigh the issue for a bit. “You ever hear that expression, ‘brothers from a different mother’?”
My stomach does a slow flip. “I’ve heard it.”
“That’s what we are.” He grins, showing his big teeth. “You and me. Literally. We got the same father.” His eyebrows arch expectantly. “Ain’t that some shit, Mayor?”
“I don’t believe you.” I’m speaking truthfully, despite my doubts about my father’s honesty.
“Yes, you do. The truth is already there, down deep in you. All I did was pick off the scab. Take a minute to adjust, if you need it. Nobody’s going to ask for our table.”
“What year were you born?” I ask.
“Nineteen sixty-eight, in December. Nine months after my mama left Natchez.”
I’m reluctant to raise Henry Sexton’s explanation of this juxtaposition of events, but what choice do I have? Lincoln has forced my hand.
“A lot of terrible things happened to your mother and her family in 1968,” I say in a neutral tone. “Her brother was kidnapped and murdered, for one thing. Viola had several good reasons to leave this town.”
“None measure up to being pregnant by her white, married boss. A man she loved, but who would never leave his wife.”
This simple, vivid description stops me for a few moments, but I press on. “Something else happened in 1968, Mr. Turner. Something a lot worse than what you just described.”
“What’s that, Mayor?”
“Your mother was raped by the Ku Klux Klan. Or several former members of it, anyway.”
The dark eyes smolder with anger. “You think I don’t know that?”
“I don’t know what you know.”
Lincoln stabs a thick forefinger at me. “You think I was sired by one of them cracker assholes?”
“I don’t know. It seems possible.”
Lincoln’s chest rumbles with contemptuous laughter. “You wish I was, don’t you? You and your daddy. That would make your lives a whole lot easier. Keep that fairy tale you was raised in intact. But I told you that first night who I am. I’m the chicken come home to roost. It’s taken damn near forty years, but I’m here now. Here to stay. And I know what I know. I had to break through a lot of lies to find out, but now I know.”
“Are you saying you have proof of your paternity?”
“I’m saying I know, brother.”
“We’re both lawyers, Mr. Turner. There’s a world of difference between ‘knowing’ something and proving it. With all respect, I can’t help raising what seems a pretty obvious objection to your assertion. You’ve got a very dark skin tone, considerably darker than your mother’s. So how do you figure that my father, who’s got the pale skin of Scots-English descent, is your father?”