An Eye for an Eye - Chapter One by Carol Culver

It was 1957, and even though the rest of the country was breathless from trying to keep up with new innovations, developments, and inventions, Fairburn, Georgia hadn’t changed much at all since the turn of the century. In fact, disregarding the two new traffic lights at each end of Roosevelt Highway (the main thoroughfare) and the addition of Hudson Plaza, which had been built a few years back and contained a Piggly Wiggly, a coin-operated laundry, and not much of anything else, the town still looked basically the same as it did in the old, yellowed photographs on display in a dust-covered glass case down at City Hall: The confederate monument—General Robert E. Lee astride his faithful steed, Traveler—still cast its shadow across the courthouse lawn; a candy-cane-striped pole still stood outside the local barbershop, except Floyd Hoskins had bought out the previous owner, Grayson Willis, in 1949; and old men in denim overalls and starched white shirts still sat playing checkers and swapping yarns on the wrought-iron benches that dotted the sidewalk in the town square. Even the Southern Crescent, though it had quit stopping at the weather-beaten faded-red depot eight years ago, still clickity-clacked down the track that bisected the town, sometimes heading north, other times south, its passengers but a blur of faces staring out at the quaint houses, the tired old store fronts, and the gray stone façade of the First Baptist Church.

What people on the train couldn’t see was the area called “Lightning,” which was tucked away out of sight on the west side of Fairburn and where the “town coloreds” lived. Not even Mattie Cole, who was rumored to be 106 and had lived there all her life, could recall how Lightning had got its name, but neither could she recall a time when it had been referred to as anything else.

Covering maybe two square miles, most of it houses, some more ramshackle than others, the area provided its residents with a diner, Cal’s Place; an auto repair shop; a one-room grocery; and a neon-lit bar, The Blue Moon, which could get pretty lively on a Saturday night. Of course, no white person ever walked through the doorway of The Blue Moon; and, overall, Lightning itself was a place white people avoided, that was, unless they had business there, like when a local farmer needed extra hands to get his crops in on time, for even though Rosa Parks had refused to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery in 1955, and despite the storm cloud called “The Civil Rights Movement” that was building on the horizon, Fairburn, Georgia was and had always been segregated. Granted, blacks patronized the same establishments as the whites in the town proper, but as Fred Jenkins, editor of The Sentinel, liked to say, they knew their place. They sat in the balcony at Fairburn Theater, used a separate entrance and waiting room at Dr. Ron Harris’s office; and though in 1954 the Supreme Court had outlawed public school segregation, black children still attended their own school, Douglass Comprehensive, which housed grades one through twelve and was located across the railroad tracks on the east side of town near the water tower and well away from the white schools. Yet, all in all, in Fairburn, the races got along.

There were a few blacks, however, like Henry Moss’s oldest boy, Jeremiah, who didn’t much care for the segregation in Fairburn or anywhere else. A graduate of Morehouse College, Jeremiah was beginning his first year teaching history at Douglass Comprehensive, and, a card-carrying member of the NAACP, Jeremiah was little too outspoken for some people’s taste when it came to certain issues, like not only segregation but also anything that echoed of racism and inequality. Not that the older blacks paid Jeremiah much mind; they just nodded and went on their way; but the younger ones were a different story entirely. They listened to Jeremiah, thought about it awhile, then looked around and saw that he was right—there was a definite imbalance when it came to how whites and blacks were treated not only Fairburn but in the whole of America. The problem was they didn’t know what to do about it. At least, not yet.

But hints of unrest aside, Fairburn was the kind of town where everyone, both black and white, knew everyone else, and no one was ever in too much of a hurry to stop and speak when they met you on the sidewalk. It was also quiet and peaceful for the most part so, in Neal Winston’s opinion, it was a great place to be sheriff. But then, why shouldn’t it be? There wasn’t any crime. Well, that was, unless you wanted to count the fistfights that occasionally broke out at football games, mainly when the local team, the Campbell High Bears, played their arch rival, the College Park Cougars, or the half-dozen times Old Man Harvey had flashed the Ladies Auxiliary while they were holding their monthly gabfest down at the library. But Neal figured those things didn’t count for much; and even the burglary of Crews Hardware a few years back was “petty” when compared to what he’d seen while on the force in Brooklyn, New York. He’d seen enough crime in Brooklyn to last him a lifetime. Muggings, killings, you name it; it was happening there twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. And Neal had been more than happy to leave all that behind.

A deputy in Fairburn before the war, he had, however, once thought he wanted to be part of some “big city” police force, so following his discharge from the army in early 1946, he’d come home for a few weeks, mainly so he could bask in the role of “local hero,” strut around, and show off his uniform and medals. He’d also wanted Darla Gordon to see what she’d let get away when she’d sent him a “Dear John” letter around the same time he’d been fighting for God and Country on the beach at Normandy. And even though Neal had been so relieved at the time to find himself still alive that losing his high school sweetheart hadn’t seemed like such a big deal, when Neal had glimpsed Darla in town on his second day home, he’d known that losing her not only mattered; it mattered a lot. She was married by then, as well as pregnant, but he couldn’t stop thinking about how it should be his child Darla was carrying instead of Lewis King’s. That and a lot of other things—like the way she had felt in his arms. So, this being the case, he’d decided “out of sight, out of mind,” loaded his car, and headed up North.

Neal had stayed in Brooklyn four years—a long four years—and when he’d once more returned to Fairburn, it had been as someone else, a man he himself had hardly recognized at times; but he guessed that was what seeing the underbelly of humanity did to a man. It, like war, changed him, inside as well as out, and left him harder, even at times numb.

Neal was rehired by the force in Fairburn—he was a good cop—not that he’d planned on finding himself holding the office of sheriff two years later. But when Billy Maddox, who’d been sheriff for as long as Neal could remember, had died from a massive coronary during a meeting down at the Mason’s Lodge, Mayor Harold Wiggins approached Neal and suggested he throw his hat in the ring for the vacant position. Winning the election had been surprisingly easy, maybe because the only other candidate was Jackson Pyle, a egotistical loudmouth folks didn’t much like; and after Neal’s first four-year term, the voters, obviously thinking he’d done a fair enough job, had elected him for another four years. Neal was grateful. Again, Fairburn, Georgia was a great place to be sheriff. That was, until late August of 1957 when everything changed.
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On the morning of August 28, Neal walked out the front door of his house on Elder Street promptly at seven o’clock and let the screen door slap shut behind him.

A big man, six-three, 210 pounds, he had the thick, wavy black hair of all the Winston men, as well as the hooked nose and high cheekbones. But he had his mother’s eyes, long lashed and a pale blue-gray that turned the color of ice on a frozen pond when he got angry. Not that Neal got angry all that often; it simply wasn’t in his nature. But when he did, like it said in that Ernie Ford song, you’d better step aside.

Going to the edge of the steps, Neal stopped and took a long, deep breath. He loved the scent of coming autumn, that heady potpourri of turning leaves, sun-warmed pine needles, and fading honeysuckle. It was his favorite time of year. The summer’s muggy heat was but a memory, and the crisp, golden days of fall were right around the corner.

The door creaking open behind him, his wife, Arlene poked her head out and said, “Now, Neal, don’t forget the PTA meeting tonight. It’s at seven, and I don’t want to be late.”
“I ain’t gonna forget,” he assured her as he went down the steps, heading toward his cruiser, which was parked in the driveway behind the green ’51 Ford sedan he himself hardly ever drove but Arlene used to scoot about town. And that was another thing Neal liked about being sheriff in Fairburn—having the cruiser at his disposal twenty-four/seven. Opening the door and sliding onto the seat, he saw Arlene come down the steps and begin plucking dead blooms off the hydrangea bush beside the porch.

A redhead, barely five feet, and a good forty pounds heavier than she’d been when they’d married, Arlene was a good wife and an even better mother. Neal had known her back in high school, but of course he’d been too smitten with Darla at the time to pay much attention to other girls, especially Arlene Longino. She wasn’t his type. Too plain, too bookish, too what they called “goody-goody.” The last thing he’d ever imagined was finding himself married to her three months after bumping into her at the local theater one summer’s night in 1950. He’d gone to see Rio Grande, starring the Duke, and was at the concession stand, stocking up on buttered popcorn, when he felt someone touch his arm.

“Neal, Neal Winston,” Arlene said. “I bet you don’t even remember me.”

And the rest, as they say, was history: he’d gotten her pregnant, and he wasn’t a man who shucked his duty. Still, Arlene was a good wife and an even better mother.

Fifteen minutes after pulling out of his driveway, Neal was turning in at the Sheriff's Office. Located on the southern edge of town, across the railroad tracks from Fairburn First Baptist, it was a nondescript one-story red brick building that had seen better days, something that could also be said for the two flags, Old Glory and the Georgia Stars and Bars, which now hung limp from the rusted pole out front, colors so faded they were unrecognizable. The town council had been promising to buy some new flags and also renovate the building or else to slate a new one into the budget, but Neal didn’t expect either one to happen anytime soon—if in his lifetime—but for now, he’d count himself lucky if the A/C had been repaired over the weekend.
It hadn’t. As soon as he walked through the door and before he could even take off his Stetson, the dispatcher, Jolene Heard, pursed her lips in that pouty way she had and said, “Neal, you gotta tell the mayor we can’t work in these conditions.” She dabbed at her nose with a white lace hankie. “I swear, but it stinks in here.”

Neal had to agree. The building had been closed up all night and was stuffy with the rank odor of damp newspapers, as well as mold, since the place leaked every time it rained. And it didn’t help that the jail was located in the back two-thirds of the building and Tom Neely had shoved a boot into the toilet in his cell the other night because Kyle Wright, Neal’s deputy, had refused to let him call his wife until he sobered up.

“I'll give Harold a ring,” Neal promised, as he tossed his Stetson toward the hat tree beside the door. Bull’s eye, it landed on the rung, wobbled a moment, but stayed put. “Anybody call?” he asked, even though he knew no one had. It was too early. Most folks were just now getting their day in gear.
Jolene shook her blonde head, making the curls bob becomingly about her face. Eighteen and only three months out of high school, she had taken the place of Irene Rider, the previous dispatcher, who’d left in June to marry Dalton Crews, whose daddy, Dudley, owned Crews Hardware, the only hardware store in town. So far Jolene was doing a good job, even if she did have a tendency to get a little too nosy at times with the folks who called.

“No, sir,” she said, pout intensifying. “Leastways, not police business. Just Dean.”

Dean was Dean Vincent, her current boyfriend and wannabe hubby, though Jolene kept putting him off and refusing to commit herself since she was smart enough to know he wasn’t exactly prime husband material. For one, Dean drank too much and hung out with Luther Cox while doing it. For another, just like Luther, he raised and trained pit bulls for fighting purposes, something that didn’t sit well with Jolene at all, since she was a big animal lover and thought dog fighting was “cruel and just plain nasty.”

Neal didn’t much care for it either. Nor did he care for Dean Vincent, though he liked Luther Cox even less. Luther was Jake Cox’s youngest son, and every bit as sorry as his old man, maybe even sorrier, and, in Neal’s opinion, that was saying one hell of a lot.