The
note was written in a scrawl
15)
Mrs Latchy Gray
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chapter
Eighteen
years earlier, a chance conversation one afternoon in New Orleans,
caused another woman to accompany River Boy's mother to the hospital
the night River Boy was born.
That woman was Latchy Gray.
Both
women had affairs with Rich Man, each for a different reason, so they
were
distantly acquainted, both wealthy from marriage, yet from different
sides of the
same world. The two women shared little except the birth of a baby boy
that put them
together for one last time.
Mrs Latchy Gray held the baby when the
mother couldn’t. She handed the boy to the adoption lady. She was one
of few people in the world who knew about River Boy's
beginning.
It was Latchy who told Rich Man where to find the
whore, but couldn't stop the advance of events that led to the
child's abandonment and death of his mother. She felt terrible for
letting the adoption lady take the boy and tried to
find him herself ... over the years remembering like it happened the
day
before.
By coincidence, Latchy Gray just moved back to Trinity after living in
Mobile for 30 years.
She re-opened the big house up on Peachtree Hill.
Not many remembered her from before, but according to recent gossip she
was a recluse and rarely came out.
While
this was partly true, she was mostly cautious about relations without
knowing the who’s and what’s of local business and social activity.
Fact was, she maintained lively correspondence with people from high
circles around the State, occasionally hosting the out of town visitor.
Latchy was smart and hid the hardness of her life behind a
veneer of wealth and polish.
Born into an unloving Creole family from the fertile lands along the
Mississippi River, they could barely afford shoes.
Her
father was an unexceptional man, and mother a weak-willed go-along, but
Latchy steered the family into favorable trades that turned their
fortunes into near wealth.
Shapely, sheltered and pretty,
Latchy's eye for money and gift for social ubiquities attracted suitors
in aboundment. Not knowing better among the choices, she married a cold
strong-willed southern gentleman of fine breeding, Mr Alghani Gray. He
was offsprung from a British-Moroccan family that owed a trading
company stretching from Portugal to India.
During prohibition,
Alghani began transporting alcohol from Canada and the Caribbean to
supply thirsty men and women with a taste of that which Mr Gray
supplied.
Within a year, he moved Latchy into the finest house
in Trinity, a newly-styled 3-story Victorian built by craftsmen using
local timber and Alabama stone.
Under her husband's iron fist, she
was expected to be timely and keep a perfect home for the endless line
of business and social guests that sought standing among the
influential.
By the time she was 22, her husband outwitted
rivals to achieve even greater wealth and they moved to Mobile, to more
easily mingle with the pillars of power.
Away from her small
town comforts, Latchy busied herself in Mobile hiring house staff but
quickly grew distant from her husband who disliked a dainty wife with
emotional attachments.
His behavior mimicked her childhood and maybe that's why she married
him.
Latchy filled the empty days with shopping and chatter among the
carefully styled women of her standing.
After
Prohibition ended and the depression wrenched the illegal whiskey
businesses into failure, Mr Gray invested in ever-larger vessels for
improved efficiencies that ended up perfect for delivering war
materials when Europe and the Far East splintered into violence.
At war's end, Mr Gray abandoned Mobile and Latchy, spending his time in
Singapore shipping opiates to the world.
Latchy,
after 32 years of marriage, nearing 50, so she claimed, and alone
except for one son that worked with her husband, left Mobile and moved
back to Trinity.
She wanted to write a novel about the scorched
route that her husband's love caused her to take, hoping that
re-telling would relieve the desperations.
It started after catching him in the bedroom kneeling in front of
another man 20 years before.
Retreating from the room not knowing whether to scream or cry, she
stood motionless in the kitchen barely able to blink.
The
minutes slowed past until he came out, naked and erect, and found her
staring at him. He had white remnants on his mouth and
didn't bother to hide himself.
He forced her to kiss, share, and
taste the companion in their home. Then stripped her and took her to
the other room, where both men enjoyed themselves with the pleasure of
Latchy as a distraction.
It was the first time in years Latchy
had been with her husband, and sharing him was too dirty to consider,
but meek and unable to confront his power, he convinced her, and they
began to have sex with different men each week. Eventually attending
parties and masked events where the women were shared by all. Men on
men, men on women, women on women. He liked the vicarious thrill of
watching his beautiful wife with other men.
She endured a level of humiliation during the endless course of shared
sex, but also discovered power.
Latchy
Gray learned how to free a man of his boundaries. Her body commanded
attention, and her skill increased with each encounter.
Slow long short fast it didn't matter.
Latchy Gray understood men.
Urging but never demanding she led them to fulfill their pleasure with
her tongue, her mouth, her breasts her soft behind.
Every opening was accepting of a man's need.
Selfishness began to dominate her life, imitating her husband's cold
control, yet unable to break free of him.
Not
a paid whore of herself, she met the finest women of pleasure,
including the lady from New Orleans who was parceled up to Jackson
County by Rich Man before she got pregnant with River Boy. Latchy knew
Rich Man from the parties, finding time on occasion to meet him alone.
She lost contact with him after the murder.
The
house in Trinity sat empty for nearly 30 years. A groundmans lived
there with his family and kept the place in repair, but people called
it the ghost house.
Most people in town were happy someone moved
in, but the decision to come to Trinity created a fate that
put Latchy and River Boy together again.
Next
morning after the
murders in Blacktown, River Boy took Abagail to the Greyhound, and then
stopped by the pharmacy to see if Bethel Wilkerson heard anything. It
was a normal day, so nobody said a word yet. He was distressed imagining the reaction. The whites would tear Blacktown apart.
Bethel, unaware of the murders and the ruin it portended for Trinity,
asked River Boy to run an errand.
Her
husband liked to fish on his days off and she wanted River Boy to pick
up his birthday gift, a new fishing reel, and deliver it to the house.
Mostly
however, Bethel had a daughter that needed a boyfriend. Her name was
Susan Wilkerson. She was going to be a junior in High School.
The popular girls at school liked cars and parties, but Susan worked at
her father's auction
business and liked fishing and walking in the woods. You could say she
and River Boy were a lot similar, and Bethel thought they'd make a good
match, plus she knew her daughter would be home when River Boy
delivered the reel.
In any case, the trip into Trinity to pick
up Mr Wilkerson's fishing reel caused River Boy to stumble
into view of
Latchy Gray. At first glance, she thought it was Rich Man. Looked
exactly like him except younger, causing her to immediately wonder if
this was the
baby boy she held in the hospital 18 years earlier.
Her Negro
gardener, Roy, told her about a boy who lived down by the river, who
ran away from a foster family. The pieces fit, and now she had to find
out who he was.
River Boy delivered the fishing reel as
expected. And just as Bethel intended, Susan Wilkerson answered the
door.
Susan,
having spent an afternoon with her father fishing next to
River Boy while he made funny jokes and scared away the fish, was not
impressed much. She took the reel, yeah thanks, then closed the door,
while he stood there and said, sure, goodbye to the doorknob.
It was a busted plan.
Tough luck there, but not for River Boy.
A
younger boy who was running to catch up finally caught
up out of breath. The boy said, there's a lady ... stopping to breathe
and leaning on his knees. The lady ... you know the rich lady ... who moved
... into the house .... the big house ... there on Peachtree ... wants ... you to
come to her house.
River Boy hadn't met the lady. He knew the house. She'd lived there
several months and River Boy heard that she barely came out.
What's she want?
I dunno. She gave me a nickel to tell you. My mom told me she used to
live here a long time ago.
Yeah, I heard that too. Anything else around?
The boy asked, like what?
Oh you know, anything new?
Naaw. School starts in three weeks.
Yeah, summer's over.
Yeah, then we sit there and it's hot but we can't open the windows.
River Boy laughed, and when it's cold we wear coats.
Both laughed. OK, yeah ... see ya later.
Okay. Hey, you want me to tell the lady you're coming over?
Naw, next day of so. I'll see what happens, thanks.
After
Latchy saw River Boy walking downtown,
she went into the hardware store and asked the clerk who River Boy was
and where he lived.
The
store clerk's answer convinced her that River Boy was indeed Rich Man's
baby boy, but the inquiry put them front page on the town gossip.
Then she bumped into the younger boy and asked him to run after River
Boy with the message.
But forget that, the
reclusive rich lady that everybody wanted to know about was asking
about River Boy who, among many questionable attributes aside from
living in Blacktown and stealing chickens, had aroused a following of
people that began to like him ... all happening just before the
Blacktown murders were going to sweep through town with fear and anger.
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