Flesh and Bone: A Body Farm Novel

CHAPTER 36

I SLIPPED OUT THE church’s side door and made it back to Broad Street undetected-more to the point, unarrested-and had just climbed into the Taurus for the sad drive back to Knoxville when I heard a soft, familiar voice. “You not speaking to me?” Miss Georgia was decked out in a sleeveless calf-length black dress that simultaneously covered and stunningly packaged her willowy body. A hint of cleavage showed at the neckline; the naughtiness was somehow both undercut and underscored by a panel of sheer black mesh stretching from the neckline up to her throat. The outfit was topped off by a pair of black gloves and the broad-brimmed black hat I’d seen in the church, trimmed with a spray of black feathers. Miss Georgia raised a stiletto-clad foot to the running board; the movement caused a long slit in the dress to open, revealing a stocking top, a garter, and several inches of bare thigh above the stocking. It was an elegant, womanly thigh, and it startled me all over again to recall that Miss Georgia was not actually a woman. “Dr. Bill, I’m sorry about your friend,” said Miss Georgia. “I saw it on the TV, and I cried and cried. She a classy lady.”

“Yes, she was,” I said.

“How come the police not let you in the church, Dr. Bill? Everybody talkin’ ’bout that after the fun’ral. You loved her, didn’t you?”

I nodded. “I think maybe I did, or I could have. I was just beginning to find out.”

“You did; it was all over your face that night at the club. She crazy ’bout you, too-I axed her, and she told me so. Anybody deserve to be in there at that woman’s fun’ral, it was you. You and her mama. Who tell the police to keep you out?”

“Her ex-husband,” I said. “I think he thinks I killed her. So does Detective Sergeant John Evers. So does the district attorney.”

“You?” Miss Georgia threw back her head and cut loose with her high, cascading laugh, whose femininity was undercut slightly by the prominence with which her Adam’s apple bobbed into view. “Dr. Bill, you as meek as a baby lamb,” she said. “No way you do something bad to a woman, ’specially a woman you in love with. I got me a mind to go find that ex-husband and bitch-slap some sense into him. Bitch-slap me some polices, too.” She grinned lasciviously. “Some of them white-boy polices? They just dyin’ to be bitch-slapped by a long-legged Nubian goddess.”

I smiled in spite of myself. “I appreciate your willingness to take up for me, Miss Georgia, but I don’t want to drag you into my troubles.”

“Sweet Jesus, did somebody say drag? Tha’s one of my most favorite words. I am all about drag, and draggin’, and bein’ dragged. Next time somebody start messin’ wif you, they gonna find theyself messin’ wif me. Then they be the one in a mess.”

“Okay,” I said. “Next time the police-the po-lice-mess with me, I’ll holler for help.” She gave me an exaggerated wink of approval.

“Dr. Bill, I done found out somethin’ ’bout that case you and Miss Jess was workin’ on.”

There was a deli near the corner-Ankar’s Downtown-so I suggested we get a bite to eat while we talked. “You know I gots to watch my girlish figure, but I would just love some sweet tea,” she said. I held the door for her, then ordered two teas and a bag of chips, and we headed for a booth that looked out of earshot of the handful of other customers. Heads turned as we walked through the deli; Miss Georgia beamed at all who stared, as if accepting tribute. And in a way, maybe she was.

Once seated, she took off her gloves, laid them on the table, and drew a sip of tea through a straw so as not to smudge her coral lipstick. “Oh my,” she sighed, “that is refreshing.” I took a swig of mine and popped a potato chip in my mouth. It was a thick, kettle-cooked chip, so it crunched loudly. Miss Georgia crinkled her nose in disapproval.

“You said you found out something,” I said. “Tell me.”

She reached down under the table and produced a folded piece of paper which I guessed had been tucked into the top of her stocking. When she unfolded it, I saw the forensic sketch artist’s two renderings of Craig Willis, in drag and in men’s clothing. “I axed some of my friends-girlfriends and boyfriends-about this person you and Miss Jess was wondering about,” she said.

“Oh,” I said, “we identified him by his fingerprints after I talked to you.” I described finding the skin from the hand, and how Art had donned the skin like a glove in order to take prints.

“Dr. Bill, that is just fascinating,” she said. She sounded like she meant it, and I was grateful for the compliment. “One of my boyfriends, he recognize the picture-the regular picture, not the one in that tatty Dolly Parton outfit-and he say, ‘That guy is not a drag queen; that asshole motherfucker is a chicken hawk.’ ’Scuse my French, Dr. Bill.”

“Chicken hawk? What’s a chicken hawk?”

“Iss a bird. And iss a pedophile. Chicken hawk swoop down and grab li’l baby chickens. They’s even a damn chicken-hawk support group, calls isself ‘Nambla.’ Stand for ‘North American Man-Boy Love Association.’ Nambla say men should be able to have sex with boys of any age, long as the boys consent.” She paused, then added, “What ever ‘consent’ mean to a six-year-old chile.”

“You seem to know a lot about this,” I said.

Miss Georgia looked away. When she looked back, I saw deep-seated hurt in her eyes. “You know that tree it talk about in the Bible-the tree of good and evil?” I nodded, startled-Art and I had discussed it, in the same context, a few weeks ago, or a lifetime ago. “Somebody make me eat some fruits off that tree a long time ago,” she said. “You choke down something like that, it stick with you for life, Dr. Bill.”

I felt a wave of compassion for Miss Georgia, but I didn’t want to pry and I didn’t know a graceful way to express it. Instead, I simply told Miss Georgia about Craig Willis’s arrest for child molestation in Knoxville, shortly before he moved to Chattanooga; she nodded. “See, thass what I’m talkin’ about. I tole you that night at Alan Gold’s I’d remember if I seen anybody in that sorry-ass drag-queen getup.”

“So a chicken hawk couldn’t also be a drag queen?”

For the second time in as many minutes, Miss Georgia looked uncomfortable. “Don’t never say never, Dr. Bill. They’s some mighty twisted people in this world. And queers be some of the twistedest.” I studied Miss Georgia for any hint of irony in her expression, and detected none. “But my friend, he say he cannot imagine this guy in drag.”

“But that’s how he was dressed when he died,” I said.

“When he die? Or when y’all find him?”

“But what’s the-” Suddenly I saw what she was getting at. “You think maybe whoever killed him dressed his body in drag for some reason?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“How come?”

“You the forensic genius, Dr. Bill. Why you think?”

“To make it look like a hate crime?”

“See, baby, you know it. It just takes you a while to know you know it. Sort of like the way you was slow to know you love Miss Jess.”

“But surely whoever killed this guy knew he was a pedophile,” I said. “So wouldn’t it still be a hate crime?”

“Yes and no,” she said. “Different kind of hate. So different kind of crime.”

Something was crystallizing in my mind. Slowly, to be sure, but definitely. “So if it’s a different kind of hate,” I said, “and a different kind of killing, that means…” Miss Georgia nodded encouragingly. “That means a different kind of killer, someone killing for a different reason.”

“Dr. Bill, you so brilliant,” she said.

“Oh, stop,” I said. “Now you’re patronizing me.” Miss Georgia’s laugh pealed throughout the deli, causing another round of head-turning. “So instead of just some redneck yahoo who’s enraged by a man in drag, we’re looking for someone who hates pedophiles. Maybe somebody he molested who wanted revenge?”

Miss Georgia looked doubtful. “You think some li’l boy done turned killer?” She shook her head. “That fella not old enough to have victims what be growed up. Besides, a boy been molested might turn molester his own self. Shit flow downstream, we say here in Chattanooga. Y’all might not say that in Knoxville, being upriver and all.”

“Well, Craig Willis sure flowed downstream,” I said. “But if it wasn’t someone he molested, then who?” Miss Georgia rolled her eyes and drummed her fingers on the table. Finally I got it. “A parent.” Then I thought of my grandsons, and how enraged I would be if someone molested them. “Or a grandparent.” And then I thought of Art, and his quiet fury at the predators he was stalking day in, day out, and of what he’d told me about the officer who caught Craig Willis in the act of molesting Joey Scott; I wondered how it might have affected that officer to see Willis set free without so much as a trial. “Or a frustrated cop.”

Miss Georgia beamed at me. “Now you usin’ that big ol’ brain of yours, Dr. Bill.” She took another sip through her straw, then frowned at the thin plastic tube. “I can’t get no satisfaction through this staw. I guess I just be out of practice suckin’ on things.” She winked at me, then put her lips into a pout and wrapped them around the straw again. “Oh, the hell with it,” she finally said in a huskier voice. She extracted the straw and dropped it on the table, then hoisted the glass and drained it in three larynx-pumping gulps. Then she set down the glass and looked at me with an expression I hadn’t seen on her face before. She looked shy, and scared, and utterly free of the dramatics and affectations she hid behind so much of the time. “Dr. Bill, could I ax you something? Iss a highly personal matter.”

It was hard for me to imagine what could be more personal than some of the conversational ground Miss Georgia had already trampled with abandon. I nodded nervously. “Go ahead.”

“I’ve had some surgery. I got these boobs; maybe you noticed?” I nodded again. “As a first step, you know, toward seeing how I might like being a real woman.”

“And?”

“I think I want to go the rest of the way.”

“Does ‘the rest of the way’ mean what I think it means?”

“If you thinking Lorena Bobbitt, it do,” she said. Then she shook her head. “Actually, iss a lot more complicated than that. Iss called ‘sex reassignment surgery,’ and they don’t just whack everything off. They kinda split everything open, and turn it inside out, and do some serious tuckin’-in. They do empty the marble bag, and take out most of the hydraulic tubing, if you know what I mean. But they make you a vagina and even a little clitoris, with nerve endings and everything.” She got a wistful look on her face. “I’ve seen pictures; I could look like a real woman. Make love like a real woman, too. Do everything but have periods and have babies, and who wants to mess with all that?”

“The surgery sounds pretty drastic,” I said. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”

“Pretty sure, Dr. Bill. I been trying to get out of this male body ever since I hit puberty. The fit just don’t seem right, you know?”

“Well, I don’t know, but I reckon you do,” I said. “But you wanted to ask me something?”

“They’s a plastic surgeon up in Knoxville at the UT hospital, supposed to be pretty good,” she said. “He trained over in France with the doctor pioneered this fancy operation.” She hesitated. “I got me an appointment a while back. If I come up there and have this done…” She trailed off.

“Yes?”

“Would you come visit me in the hospital, Dr. Bill?”

I laughed. “That’s it? That’s what you were worried about asking me? Good Lord, Miss Georgia. Wild horses couldn’t keep me away.”

As we left the deli and headed back to my boring white car, Miss Georgia took my arm. And when I got in, she leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. I kissed hers, too. It felt smooth and soft-like a real woman’s-and it was the most human, compassionate, comforting moment I’d experienced in the five days since I’d found Jess’s desecrated corpse at the Body Farm.

I decided not to take the interstate back to Knoxville; instead, in hopes a different route might distract me from thoughts of Jess, I took U.S. 27, which crossed the river a half mile downstream from the glass-peaked aquarium. It had been years since I’d taken 27; the highway had been mostly four-laned since then, but the surrounding countryside remained virtually unchanged. The road roughly paralleled I-75-both of them angling northeast from Chattanooga-but while 75 ran through the broadest, flattest part of the Tennessee Valley, 27 lay about twenty miles to the west, skirting the base of Walden Ridge, the mouth of the rugged Chickamauga Gulch, and the eastern escarpment of the Cumberland Plateau.

Forty minutes north of Chattanooga, highway 27 bypassed Dayton, and on a whim, I angled left into the business district. On the north edge of the four-block downtown, I saw an elegant old courthouse on my left, three stories of brick with a bell tower rising another two stories above the main structure. It hit me with almost physical force: this was the court house where Williams Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow had tried the case of John Scopes, the high school science teacher arrested for teaching evolution in 1925. Had I subconsciously chosen this route so that I would pass this historic spot, site of a debate that remained as unresolved today as it was eight de cades ago? Probably, I decided.

There were plenty of parking spaces along Main Street, and-irrefutable proof that Dayton was a small town-no meters to feed. I pulled into a spot directly across from the court house and strolled across the shady lawn toward the front doors. To the left of the entrance stood a life-size bronze statue on a pedestal; the inscription identified it as William Jennings Bryan, U.S. senator and three-time presidential candidate, nicknamed “the Great Commoner” for his affinity with ordinary folk of the time. Already famous for his dire pronouncements about the nihilistic implications of evolution, Bryan was recruited as the celebrity spokesman for the prosecution. I looked around for another statue; surely there was one of the lead attorney defending Scopes, Clarence Darrow. Darrow, like Bryan, was considered a titan. To his admirers, he was “the Great Defender”; to his detractors, “Attorney for the Damned.” If there was a statue of Darrow, it was well hidden.

As I puzzled over the sculptural imbalance, an older gentleman emerged from the court house, approached me, and said hello. “Where’s Darrow?” I asked. “Seems like they ought to have both lawyers out here.”

“Anybody wants to put up the money, we’d be glad to have him,” the man said. It turned out that he was the volunteer curator of the Scopes Trial Museum, housed in the basement of the court house. The court house had just closed, but when he found out I was passing through from out of town and hoped to see the courtroom, he graciously offered to let me look around not just the courtroom but the museum as well.

Stepping into the courtroom was like stepping back in time. The room occupied the entire second floor of the building; high windows lined every wall; the stamped-tin ceiling was the perfect counterpoint to the scuffed wood floor. Even the seats-old auditorium-style wooden seats bolted to the floor-were original. I sat in one of the front-row seats, imagining Darrow and Jennings hammering away at one another, and at one another’s philosophies: Darrow’s fierce belief in human free will and self-determination, Bryan’s dogged belief in the necessity of divine salvation. They staked out their positions in their opening arguments. “Scopes isn’t on trial,” Darrow proclaimed; “civilization is on trial.” Bryan set the stakes even higher, claiming, “If evolution wins, Christianity goes.”

I had long known that the trial was a media boondoggle; what I hadn’t fully realized, until I explored the exhibits in the basement, was how thoroughly orchestrated a publicity stunt it had been, from start to finish. Tennessee’s 1925 antievolution law was real enough, and so was the ACLU’s interest in challenging it. What was nearly pure hokum was the trial itself. It was the brainchild of local businessmen, Chamber of Commerce types who dreamed of putting Dayton on the map in a big way. When similar challenges to the new law began gathering momentum in other, larger Tennessee cities, the Dayton boosters maneuvered to get the date of the Scopes trial moved up, so Knoxville and Chattanooga wouldn’t steal Dayton’s thunder. Even the defendant, earnest young John Scopes, was a ringer: Scopes taught chemistry, not biology; he was persuaded to play the part of educational martyr as his contribution to the town’s economic salvation. Several students were carefully coached to confirm that, yes indeed, Mr. Scopes taught that man was descended from apelike ancestors. At one point, when a technicality came to light that threatened to nullify the charge against Scopes, Darrow-the Great Defender! — hastened to assure the court that the defense did not want the charge dismissed. Darrow hoped for a guilty verdict, one he could appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In short, the noble script of Inherit the Wind notwithstanding, this landmark case in American jurisprudence was as carefully choreographed as any professional wrestling exhibition.

As planned, evolution lost in the local court, so presumably Christianity won. But the victory, even at the time, rang hollow. Bryan-who’d taken the witness stand to defend the truth of the Bible-was portrayed in the press as a “pitiable, punch-drunk warrior.” Six days after the trial, the Great Commoner died in a house on a side street in Dayton.

Finding out how thoroughly the “landmark” trial was a sham and a gimmick was a bit demoralizing; I hated to learn that our court system was as susceptible to self-serving manipulation and grandstanding as, say, political campaigns. On the other hand, the debunking did put my banana cream pie in a broader historical perspective. If Bryan was the Great Commoner and Darrow the Great Defender, maybe-just maybe-history would remember Brockton as the Great Meringuer. At the very least, I might be able to land a celebrity endorsement deal with Sara Lee pies.