A Good American (21 page)

The town, in other words, moved on. But my family did not. For Jette and Joseph, the death of Lomax stopped all the clocks.

TWENTY-THREE

Nothing would be the same again. The world had broken, smashed into a million pieces. All that remained was baffled misery.

Sometimes Joseph remembered Lomax as he had been in life, cheerful and kind, those big warm hands reaching out toward the world. But mostly it was his mutilated, rotting corpse swinging from the tree that haunted his dreams. Sweet memory had been poisoned by the obscene violence of his death. There was nothing else left to remember Lomax by. Even his cornet was gone, stolen by the killers.

Walford Scott refused Jette’s entreaties to deliver the body to her for a proper burial, insisting (while avoiding her eye) that the corpse was needed as evidence. Instead one morning in early December, Jette, Martin, Joseph, and Cora trudged into the woods to the spot where Lomax had been found. They breathed white clouds into the cold forest air as they said their good-byes. Cora and Joseph stood side by side, holding hands, remembering that Sunday afternoon when Lomax had knocked on the Leftkemeyers’ front door and politely asked Cora whether she could spare a few moments of her time.

After that Jette simply withdrew, forced into retreat by the knowledge that murderers were strolling freely down the streets of the town. The world outside her front door became a pit of suspicion, her neighbors a repository of collective guilt. She became unable to leave the house.

When Frederick’s opened again for business, it was my parents who stood proudly at the helm, Joseph at the stove and Cora managing the front of the house. Joseph guiltily abandoned the German dishes that Jette loved so much, and built a modest, thoroughly American menu. There was meat loaf, fried chicken, tuna salad, cheeseburgers. Everything came with French fries and a pickle on the side. The blue plate special was always one of Lomax’s exotic creations, potent with the kick of chilies from Cora’s vegetable patch. Joseph cooked these dishes in sad memorial to his friend. Every pungent cloud of spice brought Lomax back to life as vividly as if he were standing beside Joseph at the stove. But when my father turned around, he was still alone.

The new menu allowed Joseph to keep his overhead and his prices low, but the volume of contented diners passing through every day meant he was still able to turn a good profit. But it took an immense effort of will for Joseph and Cora to open the doors every morning. Lomax’s murder still cast them deep into shadow.

Cora watched the faces of her customers, searching for evidence of knowledge or guilt. Everyone in the town ate there; somebody had to know something. People still joked and gossiped with her, but she could barely bring herself to smile as she took orders and refilled coffee mugs. The simplest pleasantries stuck in her throat. Joseph stayed out of sight in the kitchen, quietly dreaming of revenge. How easy it would be, he thought. A pinch of something deadly in the eggs would do it.

U
p until Lomax’s murder, Reverend Kellerman, the pastor at First Christian Church, had been given to delivering quiet, thoughtfully constructed homilies on abstruse theological points. Now, though, appalled by the attack, he flayed his congregation with the full fire-and-brimstone treatment. Nobody was innocent, he thundered. Someone must know something, and the price of silence in this world, he vowed, would be eternal damnation in the next. The clergyman almost launched himself out of the pulpit as he fretfully invoked the Almighty’s vengeance on those godless souls who had committed the crime. Some of the culprits, he knew, were sitting before him in the congregation, and this realization drove him into a storm of fury. The following week, the pews were crammed with an expectant audience, hoping for more ecclesiastical fireworks. Reverend Kellerman gave the same sermon again, and then again the week after. The more people came to enjoy the spectacle, the angrier he got. With each performance his delivery became more hysterically splenetic. Soon Sunday morning services became standing-room only.

(So it was that Lomax’s death transformed the fortunes of First Christian Church. For years there had been an intense three-way competition between First Christian, the Baptists, and the Lutherans for the town’s floating worshippers. Up until that point many people chose their church based on the length of the sermon—the shorter the better—and the quality of the fried chicken at church socials. Reverend Kellerman’s brand of fiery polemic changed all that. People didn’t care how long a sermon went on for, if it kept them entertained. The congregation shivered appreciatively as the pastor shook his fist at them, promising that they would rot in the flames of hell for all eternity. Offertory takings soared. It didn’t hurt that they had Lotte Heimstetter doing the fried chicken, either.)

E
very week Jette wrote to Rosa, but she was unable to tell her the terrible thing that had happened. Instead she buried her sadness beneath bland news bulletins. Rosa’s replies, when they came, bustled with youthful self-importance and enthusiasm. She was studying hard and relishing university life. If she noticed that her mother no longer mentioned Lomax in her weekly reports, she never asked why.

It was only the following summer, when Rosa returned to Beatrice at the end of the academic year, that Jette told her about Lomax’s death. Rosa wept for two days, numb with sorrow. She had adored Lomax more fiercely than anyone, and could not believe that he was gone. When she was finally able to look up from her grief, she was shocked to see the toll the news had taken on her mother. Jette had begun to wither in stooped defeat. She languished for hours in her chair, staring sightlessly at the angel wing that still hung above the fireplace. The lynching had cleaved through all Jette had known. She shuffled through the house like a ghost, sad and listless. She was unable to muster the enthusiasm for even the simplest projects. Had it not been for Rosa’s worried nagging, she would never have pulled herself out of bed from one day to the next.

As fall approached, my aunt realized that she would not, could not, return to Columbia for her second year of study. When she announced her decision to stay, Jette simply wept quiet tears of gratitude. Rosa knew then that she had made the right decision.

That September, my aunt returned to the school that she had left little more than a year previously—this time as a teacher. Heidi Schlatt greeted her with a grateful hug, and promptly retired.

The schoolhouse was a small, whitewashed building with a shingled roof and a bright red front door. Beyond it lay an untended pasture where the children played during breaks until called in by the ringing peals of the teacher’s handbell. The single classroom within smelled like a church, all wood polish and old books. An old flag hung limply on a pole next to the blackboard.

With her single year of university education, Rosa was, by some distance, the most qualified teacher who had ever taught there. After so many years of Heidi Schlatt’s benign but ineffective stewardship, nobody was ready when my aunt swooped down on the school like an avenging angel. She barked out commands with the ferocity of a parade ground sergeant-major. She meted out draconian punishments with such dead-eyed calm that even the most cantankerous children thought twice before crossing her. It was not long before she had transformed the schoolroom into a model educational environment, full of silent, hardworking, and utterly terrified students. Children began to come home with books under their arms. Some parents complained about the homework, but that didn’t last long. They were as scared of the new teacher as their children were.

Rosa expanded the curriculum, setting her sights beyond mere competence in reading and writing. She taught history and geography, mathematics and literature. She gave those children their first glimpse of the world that lay beyond Caitlin County. To her own quiet astonishment, my aunt discovered that she was born to teach.

W
hile Jette and Rosa gingerly picked a way through their sorrows, a new sadness came knocking for my parents. Since their wedding, Cora had suffered two miscarriages. The second of these had come on Christmas Day of 1926. After that, nothing. It was as if her body had taken matters into its own hands, determined to spare her further heartbreak.

Cora continued to work at the restaurant, but a light had gone out inside her. The bright, vivacious girl Joseph had married slowly disappeared from view, her existence reduced to wretched monthly cycles of hope and despair. Dr. Becker could find nothing wrong with her.
Keep trying
, he would gravely suggest, patting her hand in sympathy.
Everything happens for a reason. Keep trying, and just when you least expect it, your little miracle will arrive
.

It began to seem as if a miracle was precisely what was required. At church Cora and Joseph got to their knees and prayed for God to bless them with a child. As they knelt together in the pew, Joseph would glance sideways at his wife and watch her lips move in desperate supplication. Neither of them could look beyond the impossible promise of the next four weeks. The future was for people with the luxury of hope.

But the future came looking for them, all the same. In the spring of 1927 the Mississippi burst its banks in the worst flood in human memory. All along the great river, from Leeville to Cairo, the levees collapsed and sent tidal waves crashing across the cotton fields of Louisiana. The Missouri River rose in sisterly sympathy, with catastrophic results. In Beatrice, half the streets were submerged beneath a lake of stinking brown water. Anything that could not be raised out of harm’s way was destroyed. Pets and livestock drowned. Crops were decimated. Every day Joseph waded to the restaurant and bailed sludge out onto the street.

Jette’s house was built on elevated ground, and the water stopped two blocks away from her front door. When the river finally retreated, a crusted waterline of dirt marked the walls of the town’s buildings, showing the high point of the flood. Jette stepped out of her house for the first time in months and walked through the town, inspecting the damage. The pungent odor of rotting food and dead animals was everywhere. To Jette it was the sweet smell of revenge. Lomax’s murderers might have gone unpunished, but this collective retribution had been administered instead. Her grief loosened its grip.

Despite all of Joseph’s efforts, the flood had devastated the restaurant. It seemed that no amount of scrubbing or cleaning could eradicate the lingering stink of putrid floodwater. The old tables and chairs had been submerged for too long, and had begun to rot. The kitchen equipment was beyond rescue. The old piano that Lomax had loved to play was ruined forever. My father gutted the interior, knocked down the wall between the dining room and the kitchen, and waited for his insurance check to arrive.

Two months later, the restaurant reopened for business. It was scarcely recognizable. A long chrome countertop ran down one side of the room. Behind it lay a gleaming grill. In front of the counter there was a row of stools crowned with bright red leather cushions. High-backed booths with pristine banquettes ran around the periphery of the room; smaller tables were crammed in between.

Joseph proudly showed Rosa and Jette the improvements. “It all looks so bright and shiny and new,” said Jette, remembering the shadowy decrepitude of the Nick-Nack. “So
American
.”

“Well, that’s what we are,” said Joseph agreeably.

“Yes, I suppose so,” conceded Jette.

“I think it’s very nice,” said Rosa, sitting down in one of the booths. “It’s a lot bigger. Won’t you need more help now?”

Joseph nodded. “We’ll probably have to find another waitress.”

“Did you hear that, Mama? They’ll probably have to find another waitress.”

Jette looked crossly at her daughter. “Honestly, Rosa, you have the subtlety of an elephant.”

Joseph looked at Jette. “If you want a job here, you only have to ask,” he said.

“Who says I want a job?” sniffed Jette.

“
I
do,” said Rosa. “You’ve been cooped up in that house for far too long.”

“Nonsense,” said Jette halfheartedly.

“I’d love it if you would,” said Joseph.

Jette looked between her two children. “I suppose a few shifts wouldn’t hurt,” she said.

And so, thanks largely to my aunt’s shameless bullying, Jette stepped cautiously back into the world.

In addition to making the cosmetic changes, Joseph and Cora now opened the restaurant’s doors at six o’clock every morning and fed the citizens of Beatrice breakfast. Three new coffee machines stood at one end of the kitchen, fueling diners with an endless supply of caffeine.

Each morning Joseph took delivery of dozens of fresh eggs from local farms, and by lunchtime every single one of them was gone. There was nothing my father enjoyed more than cracking an egg against the side of a hot skillet and watching it cook. He loved the swift metamorphosis from limpid translucence to opaque, wholesome goodness. Poached, over easy, sunny-side up, it didn’t matter—each one slid perfect from his pan, yolks as rich and runny as liquid gold. He produced glistening clouds of creamy scrambled eggs. He created omelets as light as air. He cooked other things during that morning shift—crisp rashers of bacon by the pound, fistfuls of sausage, tottering piles of pancakes, crunchy mountains of hash browns—but he was a magician with those eggs.

My grandmother did not approve of all the changes that Joseph and Cora had made to the restaurant. She certainly didn’t enjoy the early breakfast shift, and would yawn pointedly as she toured the room, filling up coffee mugs. She missed seeing her favorite dishes on the menu. But she was pleased to have escaped the prison that her home had become, and had the grace to keep her thoughts to herself.

T
wo and a half years after the flood, further calamity came calling, this time of the man-made variety. The stock market crashed and the black clouds of economic disaster swept across the country. In the cities, jobs vanished and people starved. Things were no better in the countryside. The price of corn tumbled, but farmers were still unable to sell what they had. Vast surpluses of crops and livestock rotted unwanted on farms. Thousands of acres of cotton stood unpicked in the fields of the South, the cost of harvesting far exceeding any price that could be got for it. The weather did not help. A succession of summer droughts was as devastating as the flood that had submerged the same fields a few years earlier.