Page 79 of Hello, Summer
“We didn’t know no better at the time. Then folks started getting sick. Nosebleeds, headaches, gut problems. Women were having miscarriages. Or worse.” Her hand rested lightly on her own abdomen, an unconscious gesture. “People were dying. Even little kids. Nobody put it together until this lady lawyer, Randee, showed up. She’d been looking at the statistics in the neighborhood. Putting pins in a map to show who got the cancer and where they lived.”
“A cancer cluster. But the railroad never accepted responsibility for it, right?”
“No. Randee did her best. She filed lawsuits, but the judges around here? They were in cahoots with the railroad. And of course, the railroad hired Symmes Robinette to go to court for them. The best judges and lawyers money could buy. What chance did we have? We were just a bunch of white trash from the wrong side of town. They brought in doctors that said we’d gotten sick from smoking cigarettes, or drinking, or just because.”
Conley sipped her coffee slowly and glanced at the clock above the stove. She needed to get to work.
“Did theBeaconever write any stories about what went on in Plattesville back then?”
“Not that I remember,” Winnie said. “But then, I was busy working for y’all, plus taking care of my sick sister and her kids.”
“When’s the last time you talked to that lawyer, Randee?”
“Probably the day she went to court with me to try to talk the judge out of sending me to prison,” Winnie said. “Didn’t do any good. But I didn’t hold that against her.”
“What exactly did you do?” Conley repeated.
Winnie rubbed her thumb and forefinger together, and her face took on a dreamy expression. “I used to smoke. Did you know that? Not inside your house, because your grandmother didn’t allow it. Drank a good bit too, after Nedra died. Most of the time, I don’t miss it. But when I think about those dark times? I kinda get the taste for a cigarette and a beer.” She took her coffee mug and refilled it, then sat down at the table opposite Conley. “One day, after he’d gone and gotten electedto Congress, I heard on the radio that Symmes Robinette was coming back down here from D.C. for some groundbreaking hoo-ha they were doing for the new Veterans Administration clinic. Nedra had been dead a couple of years, and times were so hard. I was lonely. Bitter too. Wasn’t thinking straight. I packed up Jesse. I think he must have been home sick from school, and I took him with me out to where they were getting ready to build the clinic.”
“Jesse’s the youngest, right? And he’s still here in town?”
Winnie nodded. “I kind of had a plan, but I was scared. I drank a couple of cans of beer in the car to get my courage up. Okay, maybe I had three. That part was wrong. Me drinking when I shoulda been watching out for that little boy. Then me and Jesse got as close as we could to the front of the crowd, listening to the speeches. Robinette spoke, so puffed up about how he’d brought so much money back to his ‘beloved community.’ All the time he talked, I was thinking about Nedra, about her boys being raised orphans, how sick she’d been at the end, how she suffered, begging to die. So I did it. When Robinette came down from the stage, for all his shaking hands and kissin’ babies bullcrap, I crept right up next to him. He patted Jesse on the head, and I just stuck my hand down in my pocketbook, got a big old handful of ashes, and flung ’em right in Robinette’s face.”
“Ashes?” As soon as she said the word, Conley realized what ashes Winnie meant.
“Nedra’s ashes. Her ‘cremains,’ the funeral home called ’em. I wish you’d seen the look on Robinette’s face. It was hot, and he was sweatin’ like a pig anyway, so those ashes stuck to him like flour on a biscuit.”
Conley shuddered at the image.
“Some lady screamed, because I guess they thought maybe I had a gun or something. There were cops all over the place, and one of ’em grabbed me and knocked me onto the ground.” Winnie’s eyes dropped to her hands, clutching the mug. “They handcuffed me. Jesse was right there. He saw all of it. Lord Jesus, I will never forget the look on that boy’s face. When the cop was handcuffing me, Jesse started kicking at him, screaming for him to let me go.”
“Oh, Winnie,” Conley whispered, touching her wrist.
“Lorraine and your granddaddy came and got me out on bail, did everything they could for me, even paid Randee to defend me, but the judge who sentenced me, he was set on making an example of me. Plus he was one of Robinette’s cronies. He said I’d made ‘terroristic threats.’ So I went to prison. The worst part? Nedra’s no-account husband, Ed, and his sorry mama got that judge to give them custody of the boys while I was away. They only wanted the kids because the county gave ’em food stamps, which Ed sold to buy drugs.”
Conley knew bits of the rest of the story—how the two older boys had run away from their father, ended up committing petty crimes and being sent away to Florida’s notorious juvenile detention center in Marianna.
“I was away at boarding school, but I remember how upset G’mama was about what happened to Jason and Jerry,” she said.
“It’s a miracle they didn’t end up getting killed or worse at that hellhole,” Winnie said. “You know the state shut it down about ten years ago. As soon as I got out of prison, your granddaddy helped me get my boys back.”
“Despite all that, they turned out to be wonderful young men,” Conley said. “You should be so proud of that, Winnie.”
“No,” she said emphatically. “Anything they made of themselves was despite me messing up their lives. Those twenty months I was in prison? They were in their own prison, first living with Ed and then getting sent to Marianna. And that was all on me. Because I messed up. They suffered because of me.” Winnie dabbed at her eyes with the edge of the dish towel. “Now you can see why I’m not sorry Robinette died. I know the Bible says I’ve got to forgive, but it doesn’t saywhenI’ve got to forgive him, right?”
“Right.”
They heard the clank of the elevator rising from the ground floor, and when the door opened, Lorraine emerged, carrying her canvas tote of groceries.
“Don’t you start fussing at me for driving,” she warned as Conleytook the bag and began unloading the sacks of sugar, Sure-Jell, and lemon. “Anyway, aren’t you supposed to be at work this morning?”
“Am I?”
Lorraine took an apron from a nail on the back of the pantry door and fastened it around her waist.
“After church yesterday, I reminded Grayson that she’d be a fool to let somebody as talented and hardworking as you to quit over a little family spat,” she said. “So she’s expecting you this morning. I never did get a chance to ask you last night about your research. Did you find out anything interesting?”
“I found out Symmes Robinette died a rich man,” Conley said. “Just from his last campaign finance reports, I saw that two years ago, he had six million in stocks and bonds. And real estate holdings including his house in town, the Gulf-front mansion on Sugar Key, and a town house in Georgetown.”
