Some Go Hungry. J. Patrick Redmond
big plans for the youth choir, and it seems the whole congregation at Wabash Valley Baptist are excited to have him there. What happened between him and me in high school is in the past. I’m sure he doesn’t even think about it,” I said.
“Well, you be careful,” Rosabelle said. “Don’t let his charm suck you in. I don’t trust him. Keep doing what you’re doing, and for God’s sake keep it out of town. You don’t need Pastor Daryl stirring the pot at the restaurant . . . no pun intended.”
“I’m not worried about Daryl. He and I both know what happened between us. He won’t go there,” I said. “Besides, like you always say, we’ll just avoid each other like Baptists in a liquor store.”
“Amen,” Rosabelle said, and lifted her cocktail in the air before taking a sip.
Indiana Civil Liberties Union files suit in Palmer murder
By Foster Lawrence
Fort Sackville Sentinel staff writer
FORT SACKVILLE, Ind. — The grand jury investigating the unexplained death of Robbie Palmer has been stalled until it determines if it or the county can be sued.
Palmer, 18, died at a party in Fort Sackville the morning of May 3.
The grand jury, after listening to witnesses, went into recess and released the following prepared statement:
“The grand jury is considering action that would bring to light the seriousness of attempts to obstruct their legal purposes. Although the grand jury is now recessed, it will reconvene at a later date to continue its deliberations on the Robbie Palmer case.”
The grand jury issued the statement to prosecutor Dallas Ellerman, who declined to elaborate.
The ICLU is questioning the treatment of gay men appearing before the grand jury.
The ICLU alleges that “rumormongering” has surrounded the probe into the death of Robbie Palmer, who was last seen at a Fort Sackville party attended by several gay men.
Some of the men testifying before the grand jury say they have lost their jobs because of publicity surrounding the grand jury proceedings.
Other witnesses report they had rocks thrown at them outside the Fort Sackville courthouse and that an atmosphere of hysteria has developed, “promoting violence.”
Prosecutor Dallas Ellerman has gone on record saying he was “investigating satanic, ritual homosexual practices particular to Fort Sackville.”
The ICLU charges that the grand jury “witch hunt has tainted gays as murderous deviants, spurred antigay harassment, and damaged the lives of people questioned.”
Robbie Palmer was last seen alive at a party rumored to be “an annual gathering of local homosexual men, at which drugs, alcohol, and sex were freely available.”
One grand jury witness testimony, a detective with the Fort Sackville Police, said, “A young Harrison High School student innocently attended a party and found himself in the company of prominent local men whose homosexuality is not generally known. In order to protect reputations and positions, it was necessary to do away with the young man.”
The ICLU suit charges that the antigay atmosphere in Fort Sackville was abetted by prosecutor Ellerman, who said that people at the party engaged in “deviant sexual conduct” that represented a “potential health threat to our community,” and that “this kind of activity won’t be tolerated in Fort Sackville.”
The ICLU maintains that party attendees were comprised of Fort Sackville Community College theater arts students and their friends.
Chapter Five
December
Christmas weekend soon arrived, and life in Fort Sackville and at Daniels’ Family Buffet fell into a cold, winter holiday rhythm. Folks went about their daily business of Christmas shopping, bundled and quick. Even the crisp chime of the courthouse clock seemed frigid and swift. Rosabelle always said, “Indiana weather can switch on a dime.” And it did. This particular Friday was unusually cold for December, and the weather left little opportunity for shoppers to chat outside a Main Street store or for neighbor’s to gather on front stoops. Like the season’s gunmetal sky, Fort Sackville and its inhabitants remained consistent, including Old Man Atkinson.
Every day at ten-thirty a.m., a yellow cab brought Old Man Atkinson to Daniels’ Family Buffet. Regulars watched through the Buffet’s large plate glass window as he opened the taxi door and pulled his endomorphic frame from the backseat while the driver retrieved a folded walker from the trunk and slipped it over his forearm. Escorted through the double-door entrance, Old Man Atkinson gripped the cabbie’s free arm tightly with one hand while carrying an empty water pitcher—the snap-lid kind found in hospitals—in his other.
Once inside, the cabbie unfolded the walker and placed it in front of Old Man Atkinson. After getting him positioned with the walking aid, the cabbie left and Old Man Atkinson watched him walk away, get in his cab, and circle out of the parking lot, back to Highway 41, his red taillights disappearing down the road. Once the cab was out of sight, Old Man Atkinson lifted his walker with both hands—its green tennis ball feet never touching the floor—and with his water pitcher secured atop one handle, he lurched defiantly down the pathway, carrying his walking aid toward the buffet, past the cashier’s desk, to a table three rows beyond the salad bar—the same table every day. Unlike every other customer, he never stopped to pay before entering the dining room; he insisted his waitress take his money. Upon arriving, he sat his pitcher on the table, then placed the walker next to his chair and headed unencumbered to the racked dinner plates on the buffet. Our waitresses knew to fill the pitcher with water—not for dining, but to go. An hour and a half later his cabbie would return, and he would become crippled again.
On this day, as I passed his chair with my bus cart to clear a table nearby, in a rapid, revving voice, discharging his words like a pneumatic air wrench—the kind used in his tire store to remove lug nuts from truck wheels—he said, “Well, you decided to come back, did you, boy?”
“Excuse me?” I asked, turning to him.
“From down south. Decided to come back home. Where your bread is buttered,” he said.
“Actually, I’ve been back for a while, Mr. Atkinson. It was just a vacation.”
“Uh huh,” he replied.
Old Man Atkinson—Ward Atkinson III, the great-great-grandson or uncle or something of a soldier who fought in the battle of Fort Sackville—was yet another longtime customer of the restaurant. He’d once been a part of the Coffee Club Clan, its membership comprised of local businessmen, farmers, and a car salesman from the dealership next door, their numbers varying based on weather or season. He sipped coffee with them every Saturday before he got pissed a couple of years back and quit the group. When Grandpa Collin was living, Ward Atkinson had been a fair-weather fishing buddy.
Old Man Atkinson owned and operated Atkinson Tire on Main Street, started by his father soon after the debut of Henry Ford’s Model T. Before cars, it had been his grandfather’s livery stable and blacksmith shop. The tire store made Old Man Atkinson’s family a very nice living, and he had inherited his father’s nineteenth-century redbrick and timber Banker’s Tudor. It was the largest home west of Main Street, its structure and yard encompassing one city block. The Atkinson place was not an inviting home, and it lorded over the neighborhood like a raven at sunset, posed as if it were about to attack and swallow its prey. Children on their way to and from school walked several blocks out of their way to avoid passing the place. It was said Old Man Atkinson’s wife had died a horrible choking death in the kitchen while eating breakfast one morning. They said he sat there eating and watched her die.
“You know, a fishing buddy of mine once had a grandson lived in Miami. Nothing but queers and Cubans down there. All of ’em got the AIDS.”
Oh shit. Here we go, I thought. I kept bussing