obviously been living a life of emotional extremes this past year. Your last book riding high on the best-seller list, your wife dying. How—”
“That subject’s off limits,” I say curtly, feeling a door slam somewhere in my soul.
“I’m sorry.” Her eyes narrow like those of a surgeon judging the pain of a probe. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“Wait a minute. You asked on the plane if my wife was traveling with me. Did you know then that she was dead?”
Caitlin looks at the table. “I knew your wife had died. I didn’t know how recently. I saw the ring …” She folds her hands on the table, then looks up, her eyes vulnerable. “I didn’t ask that question as a reporter. I asked it as a woman. If that makes me a terrible person, I apologize.”
I find myself more intrigued than angered by this confession. This woman asked about my wife to try to read how badly I miss her by my reaction. And I believe she asked out of her own curiosity, not for a story. “I’m not sure what that makes you. Are you going to focus on that sort of thing in your article?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Let’s go on, then.”
“What made you stop practicing law and take up writing novels? The Hanratty case?”
I navigate this part of the interview on autopilot, probably learning more about Caitlin Masters than she learns about me. I guessed right about her education: Radcliffe as an undergrad, Columbia School of Journalism for her master’s. Top of the line, all the way. She is well read and articulate, but her questions reveal that she knows next to nothing about the modern South. Like most transplants to Natchez, she is an outsider and always will be. It’s a shame she holds a job that needs an insider’s perspective. The lunch crowd thins as we talk, and our waitress gives such excellent service that our concentration never wavers. By the time we finish our crawfish, the restaurant is nearly empty and a busboy is setting the tables for dinner.
“Where did you get your ideas about the South?” I ask gently.
At last Caitlin adjusts the lapels of her black silk jacket, covering the shadowy edge of aureole that has been visible throughout lunch. “I was born in Virginia,” she says with a hint of defensiveness. “My parents divorced when I was five, though. Mother got custody and spirited me back to Massachusetts. For the next twelve years, all I heard about the South was her trashing it.”
“So the first chance you got, you headed south to see for yourself whether we were the cloven-hoofed, misogynistic degenerates your mother warned you about.”
“Something like that.”
“And?”
“I’m reserving my judgment.”
“That’s kind of you. Do you like Natchez?”
“I do. It’s not sterilized or Disneyfied like Williamsburg. It’s still funky. Gossip, sex, whiskey, and eccentricity, all behind a gossamer veil of Southern gentility.”
I chuckle. “A woman I grew up with decided to move back here after working ten years as a film producer in Los Angeles. When I asked why, she told me she was worried that she was losing her mind, and knew that if she did it in Natchez, no one would notice.”
Caitlin laughs. “That’s exactly it! What about you? Do you like it?”
“That’s like asking someone if they like their mother. I’ve been away for years, but no one who grows up here ever really leaves this town behind.”
She makes a note on her pad. “I was surprised it’s such a haven for gays. But the contrasts are disturbing. You’ve got a real race problem here.”
“So does Los Angeles.”
“But this is a purely white-black race problem.”
“And your paper contributes to it.”
She reddens. “Would you care to elaborate on that?”
“Sure. The Examiner has never dug beneath the surface, never urged people toward their better natures. It was always too afraid to upset the white elite.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“You talk like you don’t.”
“Trust me, I do. Let me ask you something. I’ve been following local politics pretty closely, and there’s something funny going on.”
“Like?”
“You’d think Shad Johnson, the black candidate, would be making race a major issue, trying to mobilize every black vote.”
“How’s he playing it?”
“He’s not even mentioning race. He’s in the former money capital of the slaveholding South, thirty percent of the black population receives some form of public assistance, and he acts like he’s running for mayor of Utopia. Everything is New South, Brotherhood of Man. He’s running as a Republican, for Christ’s sake.”
“Sounds like a shrewd guy.”
“Will African Americans vote for him if he sucks up to the white vote like that?”
I can’t help but laugh. “If Johnson is the only black man in the race, local blacks will vote for him if he buggers a mule at high noon on the courthouse lawn.”
Two pink moons appear high on Caitlin’s cheeks. “I can’t believe you said that. And I can’t believe Johnson would stand for the way things are. The things I hear around here … sitting in restaurants, riding in cars with people. I’ve heard the N-word a thousand times since I’ve been here.”
“You’d hear it in Manhattan if you rode in the right cars. Look, I’d really rather not get into this. I spent eight years in the Houston courts listening to more bullshit about race than I ever want to hear.”
She shakes her head with apparent disgust. “That’s such a cop-out. Racism is the most important problem in America today.”
“Caitlin, you are a very rich, very white girl preaching about black problems. You’re not the first. Sometimes you have to let people save themselves.”
“And you’re a very white guy putting black men on death row for state-sanctioned murder.”
“Only when they kill people.”
“Only when they kill white people, you mean.”
A surge of anger runs through me, but I force myself to stay silent. There’s nothing to be gained by pointing out that Arthur Lee Hanratty is a white supremacist, or that I once freed a black man who had been mistakenly put on death row by a colleague of mine. You can’t win an argument like this. We stare at each other like two fighters after a flurry of punches, deciding whether to wade in again or rest on the ropes.
“Hanratty’s an exception,” Caitlin says, as though reading my mind.
This
