One Night in Mississippi Read Free Page A

heard one of the reporters say Graden’s name, but instead of clarifying things, the name only seemed to confuse him further. The reporter got close enough to push a microphone towards him.
    â€œDo you recognize this man?”
    The reporter tipped his head in my direction. Daniel turned towards me, but there was no visible response, and an officer shoved the reporter away.
    When they put Daniel in the back of the cruiser, he still wore the same lost look that he’d had when they knocked. He said nothing except to ask if he could go back inside to get a shirt.
    â€œHow do you feel?” Etta asked me that night on the phone.
    â€œI don’t know,” I replied, and it was the truth. I had difficulty connecting the helpless old man who had been led away to prison to the younger version of himself whom I’d last seen striding down the steps of that Mississippi courthouse.
    â€œWhat about you?”
    â€œI don’t know either,” she said. “In truth, I don’t feel like it changes anything. But I know that this means more to you. I know it’s … something different for you.”
    I let that hang on the line between us and was grateful that she didn’t continue. It was true that I had hoped for more. I felt as uncertain as Daniel had looked, but I had started and I intended to keep going.
    None of them were difficult to find, because none of them were hiding. Daniel’s brother, Patrick Olsen, was still in Mississippi. His son, Earl Olsen, was deceased. Rob Tywater and his cousin Barry were in Georgia. Blaine Pimpton was in Seattle, Paul Poust was in South Carolina, and Marty Bavon was also deceased.
    I was there for every one of the arrests. I never went to any of the trials — I couldn’t stand to hear the details again, to hear the arguments of the defence, to risk having to stand on another set of courthouse steps if one of them were set free — but I was always there for the arrests. I looked at their faces and registered the stages. First shock, then disorientation, then indignant anger, turning, each one of them, to the camera to either shout or mutter some variation of “That all happened a long time ago …”
    It never seemed long ago to me. Standing in the living room of my apartment in Detroit, it was still as fresh for me as it had been that summer in Mississippi.
    Still wearing my coat, I walked into the kitchen to start the kettle.
    I checked the cupboards. Just a few pots and pans, nothing I couldn’t leave behind. I went to the bedroom, opened the closets, then the bathroom, where I had left a half-bottle of aspirin and some eye drops in the cabinet. I put them in my coat pocket, then closed the cabinet and went back to the kitchen to fix my coffee.
    The call had come two weeks ago as an anonymous tip, left after I had been featured on a national news special. Someone thought that they recognized a man in the picture. Earl Olsen. Etta warned me that the caller could be a crank. We’d had plenty of bogus tipsters over the years, but I checked into every one of them, no matter how far-fetched they seemed. Earl’s father had told investigators years ago that his son was dead, but after the call, I got in touch with the coroner’s office and the Jackson county police department. Neither had a death certificate or any official record. The official I spoke to confessed that records older than ten years were spotty at best. The sheriff’s office had moved in 1973 and several boxes were lost. Records didn’t go electronic until 1997 and it wasn’t until 2001 that all of the old records had been completed. I had to know.
    I poured the coffee into a thermos. I dropped the aspirin and eye drops into a suitcase on the table and closed it. Everything else I owned was already in a duffel bag in the backseat of the rented Explorer that was parked outside. I left an envelope on the table with the key to the apartment and