Unwritten Laws 01(266)

Lincoln’s dark face darkens still more with blood. Then he speaks with unsettling conviction. “When a child finds out his parents have been lying to him for his whole life—not about some little thing, but about who he is, and who they are—it doesn’t exactly predispose him toward feelings of charity. Do you feel me, bro?” Lincoln tilts his head toward mine. “Yeah, you do. The next time you look dear old Daddy in the eye, you’re gonna feel like puking. ’Cause there’s nothing worse than a self-serving lie to a child.”

“Is that what you believe? That your mother lied to you out of self-interest?”

“No. Her motive was worse than that. She didn’t lie to protect herself. That would have made sense, at least. No, she lied to protect him.” Unalloyed rage enters Lincoln’s voice. “My mother thought more of Tom Cage’s happiness than she did her own. Or mine. Isn’t that pathetic? She and I paid the price for your family’s shiny little life.”

I feel my hands shaking as my heart rebels against this twisted view of my personal history, but Lincoln goes on relentlessly.

“You ever read that story, ‘The Secret Sharer’? Well, I’m your dark twin, Mayor. The shadow you never knew you had, leading you to your destiny. We’re like two parallel lines that finally converge, against all odds. We were conceived in the same town, from the same pair of balls, the same pool of protoplasm, the same strands of DNA. But we were born and lived our lives seven hundred miles apart.”

My face has grown hot with blood. “If that’s true … will you agree to take a DNA test?”

Lincoln smiles. “Any time, so long as it’s not in Natchez, Mississippi.You won’t hear Tom Cage make that promise.”

Nothing could have stunned me more than this offer to subject his claim to scientific testing. Clearly, Lincoln believes what he’s saying.

He drains his beer glass, and the waitress moves toward the table, but I wave her away.

“She’s out of pain now,” Lincoln says. “There’s nothing left to worry me now but earthly justice. Before long, Tom Cage is gonna be standing in the dock in handcuffs, just like any old nigger brought there by the sheriff. He’ll stand there while all his lies are stripped away and his soul is laid bare before the town he’s been worshipped in so long. It’s taken a lot of years, but the truth he tried so long to bury has finally found its way up to the light.”

The specter Lincoln has conjured sends a shiver down to my bones. To see Dad publicly shamed as a liar might be worse than hearing he’s been shot by a cop somewhere. I know he would rather die than be seen to have betrayed the code he tried to live by all his life.

“What you thinking?” Lincoln asks, a strange gleam in his eyes. “You thinking life would be a lot simpler if my truck ran off the road halfway back to town?”

“No.”

He laughs softly. “You sure, Mayor? Aren’t I just like some girl you fucked and hoped never to see again, come back to tell you I’m pregnant? You want me to disappear. That hope is smoldering deep in that overheated brain of yours, even if you don’t know it yet. And the fact that it’s there ought to prove something to you.”

I lay my hands on the table and push my chair back. “I think we’re done here, Mr. Turner.”

“Sure. Go home to your little girl and pull the covers over your head. You won’t forget one word of what I’ve said. This is exactly what you hunted me down to hear.”

I reach for my wallet, but Lincoln waves his hand to stop me. “My treat, brother.”

This time when he laughs, it comes from deep within his chest, like the laugh of the voodoo master in Live and Let Die.

“What the hell’s goin’ on here?” drawls a redneck voice. “Family reunion  ?”

Somehow Sheriff Billy Byrd has materialized beside our table, his potbelly straining against his starred brown shirt, and his red-tinged cheeks shadowed by the brim of his Stetson hat. His high-pitched cackle merges with and then drowns out the resonant laugh of Lincoln Turner, but it’s the pistol jutting from his gun belt that holds my attention.

Lincoln is staring at the sheriff, but I can’t tell whether he’s been expecting Byrd or not.

“Mayor Cage,” Billy says, “we don’t like people threatening witnesses in this county. And this looks to me like harassment of a witness. This man here’s gonna help put your father in jail for murder, which means you need to steer clear of him till the trial.”

“I haven’t threatened anybody. This man was parked outside my house an hour ago, and when I pulled up, he took off like he was leaving the scene of a crime.”