Deep in My Heart

During Freedom Summer in Mississippi a murderous psychopath stalks the fine white citizens of a sleepy rural town.

PART ONE

Chapter One

Thursday Night -- June 11, 1998

First, let me tell you this: I’ve been a board-certified thoracic surgeon for twenty-seven years, and I can attest to the fact that no matter what the hue of a man’s skin, his heart is always, always the same color.

            I sit uneasily in the high school bleachers waiting for my son to give his valediction address. My heart’s swollen with pride, but my mind is troubled by thoughts of an old man with a ruined ear and two dead men’s names. Next to me sits my lovely wife. She has a video camera on her shoulder and is peering through the lens at a tall figure seated in the first row of metal folding chairs set up across the gym floor so she doesn’t note my agitation. On the other side of her, my daughter Kate, my eldest, murmurs something about how handsome her baby brother looks in his long black gown and cap.

            Principal Everett Williams finally concludes his "brief" remarks and introduces my boy. Before he can completely finish Kate shrieks a violent rebel yell and spanks her hands together in a rapid tattoo. After some scattered laughter the audience joins her, and my son Robbie, his coffee-with-cream colored face blush-darkened almost violet, makes his hesitant way to the podium. Once he gets there the lights of the gym rapidly fade and single spot illuminates his youthful face. I see how his nervousness falls away, and he grins to himself even in front of all of us. I have no idea what he’s about to say. When I asked he said he wanted to surprise me.

“Thank you, one,” he points his finger to Kate who is still clapping, “and all.  Principal Williams, teachers, parents, family, and friends.  It’s been a long road to this night for all of us. . . .”

            My mind wanders.  I’m considering the raw, long healed wound I saw on the side of old guy’s head and all the differing, perfectly logical, alternate ways it could have been inflicted.  His face was not one I recognized, and his distraught, snowy-haired wife could give me no answers to my insistent questions.  She seemed vaguely familiar, and I struggle to remember if I’ve ever met her before.  I wonder why he’d demanded me to be his surgeon.  I feel a sudden coldness along my spine and a sharp hollow sensation in my stomach as I realize I should have checked to see if his face had been altered.  I should have also checked to see if his blood type was tattooed under his armpit.

            The infamous Blue Hood Killer, later also known as the Butcher of Birkenau, the only person I would ever consider a human monster, could still be alive, lying in my hospital with the stitches he taught me holding the flesh of his chest together.

            The auditorium erupts with laughter.  My son must have told a joke.  I’ll have to watch the video before he has a chance to question me about how I liked it.  I focus my attention on what he’s saying to keep from thinking further.

            “I must admit to you that I was selected to give this speech by only two tiny tenths of a percentage point.  If Jennifer Dahl hadn’t gotten that horrible toothache